MedTech Speed to Data

CoaguSense developed the first point-of-care prothrombin time/Internationalized Normalized Ratio (PT/INR) monitoring system for cardiac patients who have been prescribed warfarin. The gen three model goes from a connected device to a disconnected one. Find out why!

Show Notes

There’s nothing like finding a partner with a map when you're exploring new territory.

CoaguSense developed the first point-of-care prothrombin time/Internationalized Normalized Ratio (PT/INR) monitoring system for cardiac patients who have been prescribed warfarin. Their Coag-Sense® device monitors blood clotting rates and helps patients maintain rates within a therapeutic range. It’s designed for both professionals and patient self-testers. As with any MedTech device, there were plenty of regulatory hoops to jump through. So they looked for outside help and found it with Greenlight Guru, a company that provides an out-of-the-box electronic quality management system specifically designed for MedTech companies. 

Listen in as Andy Rogers talks with Mike Acosta, EVP/Head of Compliance, CoaguSense, and Wade Schroeder, Medical Device Guru at Greenlight Guru, to learn how outsourcing can facilitate speed to data and get you to market more efficiently.

NEED TO KNOW:

  • Understand the market by getting users' feedback—what they want/need versus “if you build it, they will come.” Go out there and get that information.
  • An outside partner can provide a built-in knowledge base.
  • In the med tech industry, quality for the sake of compliance is no longer enough.
  • COVID pandemic challenges have delayed FDA review time.

THE NITTY-GRITTY:


According to the FDA, about two million people in the United States take warfarin to prevent blood clots and to prevent stroke in people with atrial fibrillation, heart disease, or artificial heart valves. 

So CoaguSense was poised to capitalize on a large market. But as a small company with a new technology, the path to regulatory approval could have been long, tortuous, and costly. 

Greenlight Guru came to the table with a purpose-built platform that could manage all the quality, regulatory, clinical, and product development activities across the entire device lifecycle. And having the design control aspect upfront helps all the way.

Coag-Sense is now a market leader, and they’re working on a 3rd Gen simpler version to meet the needs of their older patients. Every step of the way, data drove the decisions.

Fast data. The Coag-Sense® meter directly measures clot formation in seconds. 

Procedures and templates from Greenlight Guru were audit-ready to align with regulations, including ISO 13485 and FDA CFR Part 820, and provide a traceable source of truth. 

Independent diagnostic testing facilities (IDTFs) can be used to manage call-in results from self-testers, even if a device lacks connectivity. 


Developing a “downgraded” next-gen version without connectivity for elderly patients 

The Gen 3 version of Coag-Sense actually has fewer bells and whistles in response to the needs of older in-home self-testers who are less tech-savvy. Here are the hows and whys:


Consider elderly patients' desire for simple devices
- Many older people don’t have computers at home or are not savvy with smartphones; they don’t want or need connectivity. These patients are more commonly managed by IDTF’s who can manage self-testers.  


Build in time for FDA reviews
- First, a Gen 3 FDA review is more challenging than a Gen 2  review. You’ll need to show more performance data: FDA wants to see data comparing operator to operator. In addition, the classic 30-day review for 510k is now taking almost a year, with older reviewers retiring and new reviewers coming on board. 


Be ready with a plan for post-market surveillance - IVDR
- Capturing post-market surveillance data is required now and will feed back for potential improvements.


Find partners who continually evolve
– CoaguSense partnered with Greenlight for an out-of-the-box solution for QMS & documents, but just as important for keeping up with what needs to be reviewed in international markets and traceability mapping too. 

It all adds up to one interesting discussion. Listen in. 

USEFUL LINKS:

https://coag-sense.com/about-us/

https://www.greenlight.guru/






What is MedTech Speed to Data?

Speed-to-data determines go-to-market success for medical devices. You need to inform critical decisions with user data, technical demonstration data, and clinical data. We interview med tech leaders about the critical data-driven decisions they make during their product development projects.

Hey everybody.

Welcome back to the next episode of

MedTech Speed to Data, a Key Tech podcast.

I'm your host, Andy Rogers, here,

two guests today.

First, we have Mike Acosta from Coagusense,

Mike, welcome to the show.

And we have Wade Schroeder

from Greenlight Guru, Wade,

welcome to the show.

Thank you, Andy. Yeah, you got it.

You're the first vendor to

come on the show.

This is our first kind of like three person

sort of interview,

in my recollection, so excited for today

to tell the story about Coagusense,

where you've been,

where they've been, where they're going,

where are they now,

and really how Coagusense has helped

has worked with Greenlight Guru

to get their ducks in a row,

for regulatory approval.

We’ll talk about Speed to Data,

maybe a little bit more efficiency

to data and what data is needed.

But still, you know, a great story nonetheless.

So without further ado,

let's get into it, guys.

So, Mike, we'll start with you.

Can you talk a little bit about your background,

your history in med devices and IVD

and kind of where you are today with Coagusense.

Sure, I’d be glad to.

I'm going to date myself,

but I've been doing this for over 40 years now.

All right.

All in biotech,

so grown up the ranks from a lab tech

all the way to the executive staff,

of various companies,

have had my own successful consulting company

for a period of time as well.

So again, have worked with

everything you could imagine,

from pharma, to biologics, to IVDs

med devices, etc., etc.

So that experience basically

with Coagusense, I came on board

as a consultant on the beginning of the company.

So I have been with them for the last 12, 13 years

and eventually became a full-time employee

at the executive level

and I really believe in the technology,

the platform, hence why really trying to

take this to the next level if you will.

With new technology, new state of the art

improvements, etc., etc..

Awesome.

So Mike, for our audience,

can you just describe the Coagusense platform?

What is it used for?

What are the patients?

And you know, generally, how does it work?

So basically the intended

use of the device, it is considered an IVD

where we basically are monitoring patients

who are on a Warfarin type

anticoagulation therapy.

So similar to, again, diabetics,

monitoring continually to assure

that they're within their ranges.

Extremely critical

for these types of patients

who are on the blood thinner Warfarin

only to maintain within that therapeutic range,

obviously to avoid throwing blood clots,

and obviously the events that could happen from there.

So the Coagusense is used to do a PT/INR measurement.

So tell us a little bit more

about these patients, Mike.

These patients have gone through some type

of cardiovascular event

or they're required

to be on anticoagulant therapy.

So could be short term.

Could be long term.

So basically, our device is intended

to monitor them

over the period of time

that they would be on Warfarin.

They must be within the therapeutic range

because obviously going too thin or

too thick on their blood could present

an adverse event to these patients.

Got it.

We'll definitely get into more about

the use environment and the use case.

But Mike, that's a great overview of Coagusense.

Thank you. Over to you, Wade.

So tell us a little bit

about your background.

Again, thanks for coming on the podcast.

Absolutely.

Happy to be here.

So a little bit about my background.

I'm a Medical Device Guru,

here at Greenlight.

Get that fun title from having worked

in the medical device industry

before coming here to Greenlight.

So I spent about ten years,

not quite as many as Mike

in the medical device industry,

primarily in product development,

started out as an electrical engineer, back in the day.

Product development and quality

work for a couple of different

medical device manufacturers.

The previous one to Greenlight

was an IVD company as well,

so they did cholesterol testing and A1C there.

So yeah, being here at Greenlight

three years now.

So tell us a little bit more

about how Greenlight Guru helps companies

like Mike's get their products to market.

Yeah, absolutely.

So, Greenlight is an out of the box

electronic quality management system built

specifically for medical device companies.

So we only work with medical device companies,

and that’s how we're able to build the solution

out of the box

to align with the regulations and set up

medical device companies

like Coagusense to be successful

by putting all of those guardrails in place

to align everything

with those medical device regulations

right there.

So everything's in one system.

Greenlight is, your source of truth,

everything's traceable in the format,

that is easy to submit to the FDA when you get to

that part of your journey,

you know, easy to go through audits.

We like to say it's always audit

ready in the system.

So yeah,

help them get to market fast and stay compliant.

Oh, it sounds too easy.

I personally haven't used it before, but

it certainly makes sense.

Right? You're building off of

known quantity.

You know, in the startup world is

and in the case of Coagusense

it's not necessarily a startup,

it’s been around for for a while.

But it's helpful to point to something

that's a known good quantity

and focus on the

challenges on getting to market.

So Mike, back to you.

So, how did you guys decide

to go with an outsourced quality management

system, versus building your own internally?

I know a lot of our viewers

are faced with this question as well.

Yeah,

we started out obviously

like everybody else as a manual system.

And, you know,

after building, building after 12 years,

you come to a point

in time where you're looking for that efficiency,

you're looking for that speed to market.

I think, as Wade had commented about,

it is a big challenge.

And I think to the point of

I think one of you had said,

if I look back at the number of startups

that I worked for.

Had I gone out the gate

with this type of offering and what Greenlight

Guru offers meaning, procedures, templates,

all these things,

you could save a tremendous

amount of time

getting an established quality management system.

So even though for us 12 years manual paper

based system, it is a large undertaking,

but it's going to be well worth it

when we're finally fully implemented.

I think some of the keys as even Wade

said, what really drew me to Greenlight Guru,

after evaluating, I will say the top three.

Was the fact that they are

very specific to the medical device industry.

They're well recognized

by some of the regulatory authorities,

which makes life easier for us

and the audits

that we will eventually be going through.

So all those things combined

basically led us to believe

this is the best offering for us.

And the last thing

I'll just mention, you know,

is that one of the few offerings I saw that

truly had the design control aspect,

which is first and foremost, I mean,

obviously starting out with an idea

really, truly getting the design control down

upfront will help a company

all the way through the submission portion.

Got it.

So how long is the integration process?

How long does that take?

Depends who you ask.

I would like to say,

you know, 3 to 6 month timeframe.

But we have faced some challenges

internally with resources

and some changing of focus

in recent months, dealing with some issues

with the regulatory submissions.

So it's hard for me to say pinpoint directly

that if we put in all

resources into it,

we probably could have been done

in 3 to 6 months.

But again, we've had some challenges,

so a little bit longer.

But again, no fault of anybody

other than again

just making sure we had the proper support.

Yeah, I imagine Wade that you can,

you know,

march down the product development path

in parallel with getting integrated.

Is that right?

Do you have like a bare bones model to get,

to not get in the way of of the project

getting to market.

Again, a podcast titled Speed to Data, right?

So what data is most important?

Sometimes it's clinical data,

sometimes it's bench data,

you know,

so you can get going while it's being integrated.

Is that fair?

Yeah, absolutely.

And we even have those processes built in.

We call it bootstrapping

to get you to where the point you need

to be to submit to the FDA

and not necessarily

overburden yourself

with all of those things

that could come after you submit.

So yeah, absolutely.

It's a fully,

I guess,

customizable system

where you can decide what aspects of it

you want to work with

at the beginning

and then what you can add on later.

Cool, so Mike, let’s talk

more about the Coag-Sense,

clear waived point of care use

assume it's used in the home environment.

Correct.

Talk about the platform,

so you've been on the market for a while.

Where are you in development?

Obviously, you're working with Greenlight Guru.

You're developing the next generation.

Just to talk about the current product

and where you're going.

Yeah, the indications for use

or both, point of care

as well as patient self-testing at home.

And obviously with the pandemic,

the pandemic really pushed more focus

on the patient's self-testing

rather than patients coming into

clinic, hospitals, doctor's offices, obviously.

So we're seeing that aspect of the business

truly growing here in the U.S., no question.

Okay.

As a result of that, the current version

that we have out in

the marketplace was cleared in 2019, has done

very well in both point of care as well as PST.

But we also

decided to develop the third generation,

which is a much more simpler device

for the patient self testers,

especially the elderly.

All right.

The elderly don't care about

all the bells and whistles, the connectivity, etc., etc..

So we then decided to,

if you will, develop this downgraded version

for that marketplace specifically.

So that's where we are currently.

We are under review with FDA.

There have been a lot of challenges

only because of the pandemic, because of the

so many different companies

trying to get EUA approval for COVID tests.

It has really delayed the FDA review time

and we're seeing that as a big challenge

and that's what we're working through right now,

repeating some performance studies, etc.

So we're hoping that

we will gain clearance for this third generation.

I would say

hopefully before the end of the year,

if not sooner.

When we talked in prepping for this interview,

you mentioned

what I think is kind of a monumental point here,

a downgrade of functionality, which is just

you don't hear that very often,

at least where I sit,

everyone's trying to make it

stronger, faster, you know, more specific,

you know, cheaper, higher volumes, everything.

And what I'm hearing from you is

the market wants something that's simpler.

Obviously, ease of use is important,

but features, reduction in features.

So Wade quick question for you.

Are you seeing that as a trend in your space?

You know,

companies that are

trying to simplify their products,

the features in their products to address

maybe an elderly audience.

Are you guys seeing that a Greenlight?

Yeah, I wouldn’t say necessarily a trend

specifically toward that,

you know, feature set of,

decreasing the amount of features

for the elderly,

but definitely a trend toward usability.

In the sense of, really looking at

who is your intended user

and designing it specifically for them.

Definitely a trend in focusing on that more.

Gotcha. So Mike, you mentioned

the connectivity functionality

like perhaps that's going to be removed.

I'm just picturing like,

my stepfather has a, he's on Warfarin

on occasion and

I'm sure he's using some form of this test.

I didn't ask him.

But, you know,

how are you going to track these elderly patients

if they're using this as a,

as you call it, a patient self-test in home,

if if there's no connectivity?

What we're finding is there's a development

and they've been around for a while,

but something we refer to as IDTFs,

independent diagnostic testing facilities.

And what's happening is

those facilities are really managing

these self testers.

So essentially and again because of the elderly,

they may not necessarily

have computers at home or, you know,

savvy with connecting it to Wi-Fi or even smartphones.

So the point is, is that these IDTFs

are able to manage large populations

of patients by the old method.

Call in my results whenever I test

and then basically they will help report it

back to the doctor,

assure that if there are any dosage changes,

it gets relayed in that same fashion.

Contradictory to that though,

if you think we were talking

about trends, telehealth, telehealth is really

where a lot is happening right now.

And ironically, I was in this space

many, many years ago, but it was premature.

And now I'm seeing where telehealth

is so critical.

Contrary to what we did with the third version.

But it is still very important for our current

version that's out in the marketplace right now.

In fact, we are working

with some additional companies

to help increase that telehealth communication,

not just through Wi-Fi, Bluetooth

by other means as well.

So, you know, what we were talking about

is really serving the community,

serving what we know to be the elderly,

to make it much easier for them. Yeah, I know.

This is a really interesting trend.

It reminds me of,

doing work here at Key Tech

in the drug delivery space where,

you know,

call it like a diabetes patient or something.

And you lay out,

you know, you're like,

oh, here's their simple workflow.

They come up to the kitchen counter

and they remove the cap and they clean it

and they, you know, inject

and they pair it with their smartphone.

And look, it's straightforward.

You've got it.

Well, the reality is

these patients are stepping up to the counter

with ten drugs, ten different workstreams.

And so as you were describing that,

I can see where

if you're on

a call like this,

if you're an elderly person on telehealth and,

you know, they're asking about your,

you know, your Warfrarin,

are you taking it and,

what are your PT/INR readings and

and they're just confused.

Like I thought I uploaded it to the cloud

and, you know, who am I talking?

So I can see that having a simple device,

multiple devices and that kind of one line

of communication through telehealth being a more

reliable, maybe not as scalable,

but reliable way to manage remote patients.

So I hadn't really thought about it

that way until just now.

And I think the patients have a

little bit better comfort level as well.

You know,

like we talk about old school,

you know, again, you're

talking patients well over 65, 70

who are on Warfarin long term,

and having to test, having to report the results.

And I think there is a level of comfort there

by continuing to,

be able to be managed by these IDTFs

or similar offices.

You mentioned also in your response about,

FDA reviews and with COVID things being delayed,

can you just again,

Sped to Data is the name of the podcast.

So talk a little bit about the data that

you have to collect now that

maybe you didn't in Gen2,

the one that's on the market today,

but the one, you know,

what do you have to collect now?

What data to get through and get clearance?

You know, with clearances with the FDA

it can change every submission

every reviewer in this particular case.

Again, Gen3 of a device

that we thought would be a very simple

what we call a special submission,

which means 30 day review for the 510K.

here we are pushing almost a year

that this is still being under review.

Okay.

In my opinion,

it should have been pretty much a slam dunk,

I believe, because, again, out the gate

we were informed about the potential delays

because of EUAs, COVID, etc.

These are the challenges you go through.

So our reviewer,

as we got the first set of questions from him,

we responded,

which we felt would be adequate

and don't hear anything.

And then all of a sudden we find out he retired.

So now you get pushed over to new reviewers.

It's like starting the clock over again.

Okay.

I think again, like any product,

when you have different reviewers,

everybody has their own specialty

and they're going to hit their hot button,

relative to what they want additional information.

So this round and again, talking about data,

this round or this particular product

has really been focusing

around this statistical analysis.

What used to be very simple

of submitting regression, you know,

graphics, Bland-Altman’s, things of that sort

has now turned

into a much larger scope of their expectations.

So that's what we're dealing with right now

is really doing multiple days of testing.

It's all bench testing.

We don't have to be in the clinicals

for this particular next gen,

but it's very, very time consuming

and like I said,

that's where we are right now,

trying to complete the five days of testing,

making sure that we're providing

the right statistical analysis to the FDA.

So obviously,

that data is so critical,

having the expertize of statisticians

to help us out, to really decipher the data

and present

to what we believe the FDA will accept now.

Yeah, just did my homework

on my statistics from,

from high school and freshman year of college.

Just, if I may,

at its simplest comparing

to different populations or samples?

You've got data from your Gen2

and data from your Gen3

using the same blood analog

and proving that they're equivalent.

Is that basically what you're trying to prove?

That's what we went out to get.

And what we have been doing

is all I'm trying to do, is prove,

that my third gen is equivalent to my second gen

right, substantially equivalent.

All right.

FDA took this a step further now.

And even though we're running controlled samples,

what they want to see

is also operator to operator.

So that's something new

that was thrown

into the protocol,

thrown into the requirements or requests of data.

And so that's what we're dealing with.

I mean, we all know techniques can vary slightly,

you know, from different technicians, but,

until you really get into the nitty gritty of it,

do you understand, wow, that little difference

of, let's say, point one can throw your percent CV off

dramatically.

So it's all about how do you look at the data,

how do you present the data

so that it is acceptable for them?

Hey, wait on for Greenlight Guru.

Do you guys have

document templates and such for these sort of,

I guess, test reports to

to use in support of regulatory submission?

Or do you kind of

focus more on your primary process

check and review, and not really go to that level.

To what level of detail does Greenlight go here?

The templates we have

that we provide with purchase of Greenlight is

they're more encompassing

all of the procedures were constructed,

you need to

create and set up your quality management system

more to align with 1345 and part 820.

But those technical type of documentation,

it's hard to get too specific

with generic templates

for those since every device is so different.

But we provide high level at least to

help you get started

so you're not starting from scratch.

Awesome. Well, Mike, best of luck

with getting through the latest

round of reviews and,

you know, getting on the market here soon.

And again,

I just love the story of going

from connected product to,

a disconnected product in a way

Is the connectivity functionality worth it,

you know, for your distributed at home

device, you know,

clearly you're going from a connected device

to getting rid of these bells and whistles,

to use your terminology.

How are you leveraging the connectivity

with your Gen2?

As I'm sure there's clear value in it, like

how are you guys using it?

I think the connectivity is really more of a need

for the professional

for the point of care, more

so than the patient self tester.

So hence Gen2 will still

mantian a PST version for those younger,

I will call it more technology savvy patients

who do enjoy the connectivity,

who do enjoy all the bells and whistles.

So really

I think we had to adapt

or have this

PT3, the offshoot, the third gen

mainly more so for the elderly patients, right.

So it's adapting to the marketplace

whether and this is obviously demographics here,

you know, for the aged,

this will make it a lot easier for them,

for the tech savvy people.

They're still going to go with the second gen,

no question,

because they do like all the bells and whistles.

For the tech savvy and for your customers,

your customers aren't necessarily the

the patients taking the test at home.

It’s their provider groups

or whatever that are distributing

those tests to them.

Are your customers monitoring them at home

just real time across

hundreds of devices?

Just talk a little bit

more about how the patient self-test

connected device is being used by

you know, your clinic customers.

Yeah, I think, you know, all the patients

who are using

these devices are either

reporting directly

to their physician office, obviously, or again,

these are IDTFs that I mentioned which manage

several patients.

They do the troubleshooting,

they do all of that for these patients.

So it is a wide variety, if you will,

across the U.S..

And again, like I said, I believe it's

a growing marketplace here.

Even though, we've seen some changes internationally

by patients being prescribed other types of drugs

that don't require monitoring.

Warfarin and is still very prominent

here in the U.S.

And I believe it will remain that way

and continue to grow.

So it's like we've been talking about is

how do you adapt,

how do you adjust to the market technology,

everything that goes along with it

to really continue to grow the company?

You know, we're working on some other assays

that will be using the same platform.

All those things are important to us dealing

with all the regulations,

even the international front,

which is always changing.

So it's really just about,

you know, making things more efficient

and really adapting to that marketplace,

if you will.

Wade, for these international markets

and other markets.

And just in general,

how is Greenlight sort of constantly

revising their offering to

keep things optimized in terms of like what

what really needs to be reviewed versus

what might be seen as as excess?

Yeah, absolutely.

The biggest thing from Greenlight side,

as I mentioned, built specifically

for medical device

and being an out of the box solution

that all of our customers are getting,

the same thing is that we're able to

since we validate it for our customers,

we're able to release new versions

of the software consistently.

Right now we do it quarterly,

and so we're always able to stay up to date

with the newest regulations,

you know, and new ISO versions.

ISO standards come, or MDR is released,

we're able to stay up to date with those.

I would say internationally, the biggest thing

with MDR

is all about traceability in the postmarket

and that we have tools built specifically for that.

We call it Visualize.

Actually, the shirt

I'm wearing today, which is kind of funny, but

you're able to see

full traceability since it's all in one system,

one source of truth there.

You can see this mind map

of how everything's connected in your system.

So you can understand if I change this,

what could it impact?

And things like that.

Yeah, it's pretty powerful.

If you know that quarterly

your getting the latest version

of what may be in the prior quarter

somebody had been audited against

and was shown to be not necessary.

So I'm sure Mike is reaping those benefits.

He just might not know it. Right.

Well, and another point, I mean,

and I've talked to Wade about this

as well as some of his colleagues is

you also have to understand that

when you go through audits,

the different notified bodies, the different agencies,

I mean, you have different interpretations

that occur over time.

In fact, Wade and I talked about this relative to

the corrective and preventive action module.

That I had four clients in a row,

get challenged on something

that was unbeknownst to us that

we're already doing it,

but they wanted to see it in a specific sequence,

if you will.

So we had talked about that

so that, again, it's ever changing out there.

And I think that's the beauty

with Greenlight Guru is that okay,

they'll listen

and when they can incorporate something,

if they do see it as a trend

or the other thing I like about it

and not that it's fully customizable,

but to Wade's point earlier, is that

they have certain things that you can customize

so you can satisfy the future auditors, okay.

By rolling

in this additional step that they want to see.

So it's so critical

not only for industry but also for, you know,

vendors, suppliers like Greenlight Guru,

is to keep up with the trends

and the evolution as well,

just to make it easier for all of us,

you know, out there.

And I expect that will continue on

no matter what.

Yeah, Mike, you used the word trends.

I mean, two things come to mind

when I'm talking to both of you. The first is

preventative care. Prevention.

In ten years, we are going to be doing blood tests

to check

the biopsy assays, whether we're at risk for cancer,

you know,

so prevention.

And then the other trend is drugs

requiring monitoring.

I think just sticking with cancer,

at Key Tech here, we do a lot of work

in oncology,

drug preparation, drug administration.

And,

you know, at home,

you're going to want to make sure

you're getting the right dosing

for the right drug.

And, you know,

you have to administer the drug

and then you have to do a blood test

to make sure that, you know,

your quality of care is

you're getting the right dosage

basically, dose monitoring.

So what you're doing it

Coagusense Mike I think is

you know very similar

like you know diabetes care

where you're monitoring,

you know, your insulin and

administering glucose as needed or monitoring

your glucose, administering insulin as needed.

And so I think there's a lot to be learned by

this use case here at Coagusense where,

you know, it's at home,

it’s patient administered self tests in the COVID era

or it's point of care in a clinic.

There's going to be

I mean, I think that the use case

is generally going

to be the same right, collect blood

and put it in the analyzer.

But I just think that there's going to be,

two or three orders of magnitude

more people doing this type

of testing in ten years.

So what I wanted to open the floor to discuss

here is

what can be leveraged by what you've learned

at Coagusense

and Wade, what you're seeing with,

you know, customers like Coagusense,

so that you know, in ten years

that use experience

is just that much that much better.

What can we leverage, Mike you talked about

just staying ahead and,

you know, elderly patients want simpler

functionality and just a

simpler device to interact with.

But, you know, on the other side of the coin,

some patients want more functionality

and more connectivity.

So, you know,

if it's a couple order of magnitude

more patients

that are using your product,

what can we learn from what you're doing now?

I think the big thing and again,

being in the industry for so long

is the fact that trying to take more

of the laboratory testing

into the home testing or point of care testing,

right?

People don't like going into the lab,

having their blood drawn, etc., etc..

And I look back in my career as an example

when proteomics and genomics

really started to be a hotbed.

A lot of my clients back then, were going

from an R&D assay

and wanting to get into a commercial assay,

and you're talking about this large

instrumentation, equipment

that was being developed and used

and then trying to miniaturize it

to get more into the laboratory setting.

And I think now it's pushing it more to

what can you do to either

get a point of care

or the actual testing at home.

And I really believe

that's going to be the continuation,

the trends that we're going to see,

what other assays, HBA1C,

that counters along with the glucose testing

that used to be large

equipment, laboratory instrumentation.

Now we're seeing that getting down

to a point of care

or potentially even home use,

at some point in time.

So personally, that's where I think the trends

will go, as well as I think enhancing further

the simplicity of reporting the information

to your attending physicians.

And the other way

to kind of think about this,

what you're learning now is

if two orders of

magnitude more people are using your product,

that's going to make the data

you need to collect for regulatory approval

that much greater too, right,

because you're going to have to account

for that variability

in the different use case, right?

Well, I think what's most important

tied to that right now is with,

you know, Wade alluded to the MDR.

Obviously we are impacted by the IVDR

is what we call the post-market surveillance.

I mean, that is now collecting actual use data

that's going on out there

to really help

support, you know, the company,

it's a requirement.

So I think that's really what

it's coming down to.

How well can we capture that postmarket data

moving forward here?

Because that's going to feed back

in for potential improvements,

for increased potential risks

or mitigation of risks,

all those things that come to play

during the development

as well as the lifecycle of the product.

Wade, what are you seeing at Greenlight with,

you know, the shift towards

consumer health, and just,

larger quantities of these devices

being used at home.

And like I said, ten years from now,

two orders of magnitude

more people doing blood based tests.

What are you seeing?

I think circling back to the usability,

that's the biggest trend that I'm seeing is

people, customers,

you know, companies that we work with are

hitting and contacting

their potential customers much earlier on

and doing those preliminary usability studies.

The, you know,

trying to figure out ahead of time,

how should we design this device,

what is actually needed,

what do they want from this?

Rather than the approach of

we know what they want

and our engineers are going to build it.

Actually going out there

and getting that information

that has been a big trend

I've seen just in the last two years even,

is just a bigger focus on that.

And that's even a business strategy

almost as much as it is a medical device strategy.

And I think that's going to drive

a lot of at home use as well.

Yeah, we're seeing that as well.

We're seeing we're doing more VOC studies

now than we ever have,

global companies,

trying to answer the question,

is this product,

what our potential customers want.

So I agree with you.

All right.

That was all ahead on my end.

So, you know, Wade,

thank you so much for coming on the show.

And Mike, always a pleasure and

great to get to know you here

the last couple of weeks or so.

And you know, all the best with Coagusense

getting this Gen3 on the market and

scaling up the company like you've described

Thank you.

It's been a pleasure to be here and enjoyed the

the chat. No question.

All right.

Yeah., thank you Andy.

That's it, everybody.

Yeah, that's it, everybody.

We'll see you on the next episode of

Med Tech Speed of Data. Take care.