Project Proposal - Radiology 3-D Post-Processing Service |
| Post Date: May 6, 2009 |
| Posted By: Ting Chen |
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| Where will the business be located? |
| Headquartered in Washington, DC, Everest Scientific has a secure data center in Northern Virginia and a post-processing center in Shanghai, China. |
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| What is the problem or pain point that the business is trying to solve? |
Radiology 3-D post-processing has become indispensable to clinical practice. Post-processing techniques transform gigantic CT/MRI image datasets into more intuitive 3-D reconstructed images, which often provide clinicians with better representations of radiological anomalies and facilitate accurate diagnosis.
However, in-house post-processing has negative productivity and financial implications for hospitals. Dedicated technologists have to spend long hours on labor-intensive post-processing, using expensive workstations and software, but insurance reimbursement for post-processing is low. More importantly, post-processing often disrupts the normal workflow of a radiology department, and impairs its ability to generate revenue from more lucrative CT/MRI scans.
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| What is the solution to this pain point? |
We provide radiology 3-D post-processing outsourcing services for hospitals and teleradiology companies. Through thin-client technical platform, our low-cost offshore radiologists perform post-processing for American hospitals remotely.
By outsourcing post-processing, hospitals can focus on other more profitable radiological procedures, and avoid the huge investment in equipment and staff for post-processing. More importantly, our specially-trained radiologists can provide better and more consistent 3-D post-processing service. |
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| What is the size of the addressable market? |
| Clinical demand for post-processing is huge. Market research suggests that the U.S. market for radiology post-processing is about $16.4 billion per year. With more advanced CT/MRI scanners being installed, the demand for post-processing will only keep on growing. The increasing demand, together with problems of in-house operations, presents great business opportunities in post-processing outsourcing services. |
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| How would you describe the competitive landscape? |
| We are the first one using oversea radiologists to provide low-cost but high-quality post-processing service. In-house operations of U.S. hospitals are our major competition. Our competitive advantages include low labor cost, high quality service and proprietary thin-client platform. By using low-cost oversea radiologists, we only charge 50% of the in-house cost of clients. Quality of post-processing by our oversea radiologists is superior to that by U.S. technicians. Our proprietary thin-client post-processing system requires advanced knowledge to design, integrate and install. These combined factors cannot be easily emulated by potential competitors. |
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| What are the major barriers to entry? |
The major barriers to entry include:
1) How to persuade customers to outsource their 3-D post-processing?
Healthcare industry is notoriously slow to respond to new ideas. Hospitals and radiologists have natural inertia to delegate a task to an external service provider. Because of their extensive medical imaging industry and clinical experience, the company founders have close personal and professional relationships with chiefs of many radiology departments and executives of major teleradiology companies. The unhampered access to the tight-knit inner circle of radiology can help us quickly build a solid customer base.
2) How to maintain high-quality service catering to challenging clinical requirement?
Company founders, including Harvard radiologists and medical imaging scientists, have many years of experience in 3-D post-processing clinical practice and software R&D. They understand the clinical demand and are familiar with the workflow of 3-D post-processing. Harvard standards of post-processing are among the highest in the nation and widely accepted by other U.S. hospitals. Our oversea radiologists are all senior physicians proficient in post-processing. In addition, we have a rigorous internal quality assurance program to ensure the high standard of our service.
3) A technical platform which ensures smooth post-processing outsourcing operations
Offshore post-processing outsourcing imposes many challenges on the technical infrastructure. Network latency, caused by geographical distance, is an obstacle for smooth remote 3-D post-processing. In addition, effectively utilizing expensive international private bandwidth is also vital to the cost control of this business. Our founders have many years of hands-on experience in post-processing software R&D and healthcare IT implementation. We successfully developed and tested a proprietary remote 3-D post-processing system (Patent Pending). The system is mainly based on thin-client software and network optimization technologies. |
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| What are the major achievements to date? |
1. Installed & tested thin-client post-processing system with GE & AT&T
2. Established a post-processing center in Shanghai
3. Recruited 20 Chinese radiologists proficient in 3-D post-processing
4. Reached service agreements with 3 renowned hospitals for services
--- Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital of Harvard, University of Texas Hospital, Washington Hospital Center
5. Formed partnerships with several teleradiology firms, including the largest subspecialty reading company in the U.S. and the largest teleradiology provider for the U.S. government. |
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| Who are the members of the management team, and what are their backgrounds? |
Our management team brings balanced experience to the company, including entrepreneurship, imaging technology R&D, clinical practice, and marketing and sales. The same core team successfully founded and developed a medical imaging technology company which was later acquired by private investors for $30 million. Because of the commercial and technological value of its inventions and products, the team has won more than $2.5 million Small Business Innovation Research grants from the U.S. government.
Ting Chen, PhD, Director of Business Development -- Dr. Chen is responsible for developing and maintaining relationships with clients and strategic partners. Prior to Everest Scientific, Dr. Chen was an Associate Manager with The Nielsen Company, providing consultancy for global pharmaceutical companies on new product launch and sales forecast. Dr. Chen received her Ph.D. in Cell Biology from Georgetown University, where she developed novel strategies for treating multi-drug resistance ovarian cancer. Currently, Dr. Chen is pursuing her MBA at Columbia Business School and serves as a Science and Technology Ventures (STV) fellow for technology transfer at Columbia University.
Fleming Lure, PhD, President -- Dr. Lure is a renowned medical imaging scientist and successful entrepreneur. Most recently, he served as Vice President of Product Development at Guardian Technologies International, a publicly traded imaging technology company. In 1998, Dr. Lure co-founded Deus Technologies, a computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) technology company, and served as Vice President of R&D until its acquisition by private investors. From 1994 to 1997, he served as Senior Scientist at Kodak Healthcare and developed its first CAD product.
Zegang Dong, PhD, Chief Operating Officer -- Dr. Dong has many years of experience in imaging technology commercialization. From 2006 to 2008, he was a Senior Scientist at Guardian Technologies International, where he developed advanced imaging software, and established product distribution channels in Asian countries. Before joining Guardian, he was a Project Manager at National Biomedical Research Foundation (affiliated with NIH). He is an Associate Editor of the journal “Computerized Medical Imaging and Graphics”.
Vassilios Raptopoulos, MD, Chief Medical Officer -- Dr. Raptopoulos is Professor of Radiology, Harvard Medical School, and Vice Chair for Clinical Services at Radiology Department of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Dr. Raptopoulos has been president of the New England Roentgen Ray Society and the New England Society of Ultrasound in Medicine
Richard Smillie, Vice President of Sales -- Mr. Smillie is a seasoned medical imaging professional with over 35 years of experience in sales and marketing. Mr. Smillie worked closely with clinical sites to develop marketing materials and tools, and established global sales distribution networks for different products. Prior to Everest Scientific, Mr. Smillie had held a variety of positions in the medical imaging field, including Vice President of Sales at Analogic Corporation, and Sales Director at Phillips Healthcare. |
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