Medical technology company Echo IQ (ASX:EIQ) has employed leading American healthcare executive, Dustin Haines, as new chief executive officer (CEO) to spearhead efforts to commercialise and scale its EchoSolv artificial intelligence powered platform in the lucrative US market. The innovative platform is designed to automatically identify patients at risk of structural heart disease with unparalleled speed and accuracy.
The appointment of Haines follows formal approval for EchoSolv to be sold and marketed in America, as granted by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) earlier this week. The landmark regulatory clearance has now opened the door for Echo IQ to fast-track its monetisation push into the US.
In preparation, the company has been pursuing discussions with numerous American interest groups such as hospitals, medical device manufacturers, and pharmaceutical businesses to promote the clinical benefits of EchoSolv.
In turn, management believes that the company is now well positioned to convert such negotiations into material agreements, with the appointment of an experienced US-based CEO cited as a key step in shifting this process up a gear.
Haines appears to fit the bill to a tee, with a professional background in commercialising innovative therapies in the biotechnology and pharmaceuticals sectors that stretches back for more than 25 years.
Notably, he most recently acted as vice president and general manager of Asia, Middle East, Turkey, and Russia for NASDAQ-listed biopharmaceutical titan Gilead Sciences, which has a market capitalisation of more than US$100 billion.
Haines will formally take the reins of Echo IQ early next year.
Echo IQ executive chairman, Andrew Grover, said:
“Dustin is joining the Company at a pivotal time in Echo IQ’s growth and development and was selected because of his executive experience in delivering commercial outcomes across the healthcare industry. As a US-based executive, we will have the ability to leverage his extensive network in the world’s largest healthcare market to drive sales growth for EchoSolv.”
According to Echo IQ, heart disease is the leading cause of mortality worldwide with some 30 per cent of deaths attributed to cardiovascular complications, and about 50 per cent of people with heart valve disease unaware of their ailment.
Despite such profound numbers, the diagnosis of cardiac disease using conventional methods remains a challenge that can lead to misdiagnosis or underdiagnosis by medical practitioners.
Through the EchoSolv platform, Echo IQ aims to harnesses the power of artificial intelligence and capitalise on its exclusive access to cardiac big data to help medical professionals achieve earlier and more accurate diagnoses for structural heart disease, with a particular focus on aortic stenosis.
It has been trained on more than 200 million data points and has already been clinically validated through a US study which delivered 100 per cent accuracy in the detection of severe aortic stenosis. Another study in Australia concluded that the platform showed a significant 72 per cent increase in detection accuracy when compared with human-only diagnosis.
EchoSolv also helps to lower the labour intensiveness in heart disease diagnosis by allowing medical professionals to obtain results on-the-go with real-time alerts, and in less than three seconds per patient.
According to the company, about 1.5 million people suffer from aortic stenosis in the US alone, cumulating in a direct cost to the nation’s healthcare industry of US$10 billion. Reportedly, the disease has a two-year mortality rate of 50 per cent when left untreated, and accounts for 11 extra days of hospital time due to underdiagnosis.
The regulatory clearance for EchoSolv appears to pave the way for Echo IQ to drive adoption of its diagnostic platform in the country. Meanwhile, the appointment of a high-calibre CEO could be instrumental in positioning Echo IQ as an influential player in the American heart disease diagnosis market.
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