Meticulous health and tailor-made medications are the holy grails of the healthcare sector. While the two terms may sound familiar, they are idiosyncratic in their own way. Here the real question lies in asking what bridges personalized medication to ideal health?
Scientists and healthcare experts have been a tower of strength in defusing this gap by providing accurate and precision testing through advanced diagnosis and imaging. And not to forget, this has been the most preferred road to standard health.
Building up and structuring the road of healthcare via advancing technologies is Positrigo AG– a medical imaging organization. The organization has created a clinical route to make functioning imaging accessible for people worldwide and thus create a long-lasting social impact.
Pioneering the path to accurate and precision health is Prositrigo’s Co-founder and CEO, Dr. Jannis Fischer, alongside Dr. Max Ahnen, Co-founder and COO. They believe in the technological walkway and offer solutions that meet the current imaging standards at a fraction of today’s cost in order to make healthcare accessible and affordable.
We at Insights Care got an opportunity to interview Dr. Fischer and Dr. Ahnen. They shared valuable facts about Positrigo AG and how the company is walking on the dedicated path of ‘imaging everyone.’
Below are the excerpts from the interview:
Please brief our audience about Positrigo AG and kindly tell us the source of inspiration for venturing into the medical imaging niche.
We are a Swiss-based medical technology company that was founded in 2018 as a spin-off from ETH Zurich. The inspiration for venturing into the medical imaging niche was the feedback from clinicians who experienced the need for a dedicated brain Positron Emission Tomography (PET) system. Today only full-body PET scanners exist, making this diagnostic modality expensive and preventing its broad availability. The technology we developed will help clinicians, and patients access precision medicine on a larger scale.
Can you elaborate upon the core values on which Positrigo AG is built, what is its mission and vision in the healthcare industry?
Positrigo´s mission is to make functional imaging accessible for people worldwide and create a lasting social impact. We advance clinical routine and enable research in diagnostics, treatment monitoring, and the development of new therapies. Positrigo makes functional imaging scalable. Positrigo´s strengths are a customer-centric design together with outstanding product quality and excellent customer support.
Kindly elaborate upon the services that positioned Positrigo AG to stand out as an advanced medical imaging solution provider in the modern healthcare sector.
We develop, manufacture, and commercialize a dedicated brain Positron Emission Tomography (PET) system – called NeuroLF. NeuroLF is unique as it is much smaller and less expensive compared to conventional full-body PET scanners. In addition, the system offers high patient comfort and satisfaction and is intuitive and easy to use. Clinicians will use the images from our advanced imaging and high-quality hardware offering, to diagnose patients with brain disorders and likely apply for precision medicine.
What is your opinion on healthcare providers’ aligning their offerings with newer technological developments, especially when it comes to catering to the ever-evolving needs of the healthcare industry?
Healthcare providers are under constant cost pressure while having the aspiration to offer high-quality care. In addition, new research findings are published on a regular basis which makes it necessary for healthcare providers to stay up to date with the latest research and technological developments and advancements. With our technology, we want to offer a solution that meets current imaging standards at a fraction of today’s cost.
What advice would you like to give to the budding entrepreneurs and enthusiasts aspiring to venture into the medical imaging niche?
We encourage other entrepreneurs to consider the functional imaging space as it offers great potential for ground-breaking future developments. The focus on precision medicine and a more personalized approach to healthcare provision strengthens the need for dedicated diagnostic tools. If you plan to develop a medical device, we strongly suggest that you listen to your customers.
It is essential to talk to them early on to guide their development. At the same time, making a medical device is entirely different from prototyping at a university. It is essential to be diligent and thorough in documenting and testing the device before applying for market approval.
How do you envision scaling Positrigo AG’s services and operations in 2022 and beyond?
After having obtained regulatory approval in Europe and in the US next year, the focus will be on the commercial expansion and the establishment of our dedicated brain PET technology as a state-of-the-art modality that every imaging center with a focus on neurological patients needs to have. In addition, we plan to build on our initial product offering and offer additional services.
Please give us a few testimonials from your clients and awards or recognition that accurately highlight your organization’s position in the market.
“NeuroLF being a dedicated brain scanner will lower the cost of brain scans making this diagnostic tool more broadly available.”
- em. Alfred Buck, former Head of NeuroPET, University Hospital in Zurich
Two Pillars of Positrigo AG
Dr. Fischer studied physics at FU and HU Berlin with exchanges to ETH Zurich, University of California Los Angeles, and CERN. During his Ph.D. at ETH Zurich, he worked on the development of SAFIR, a small animal PET system with unprecedented temporal resolution. BPET (a SAFIR spin-off) started in 2017 with the grant of an ETH Pioneer Fellowship, which was the foundation for him and his business partner Dr. Max Ahnen to start Positrigo.
Dr. Max Ahnen became a Ph.D. student on gamma-ray Cherenkov telescopes at the ETH Zurich Institute for Particle Physics after studying physics at the TU Munich, the Max Planck Institute for Physics, and Durham University. In 2018 both were named as Forbes Europe 30 under 30 in the Science and Healthcare sector.
