Our core philosophy is to bring to market devices and therapies that address significant needs across multiple disciplines by working directly with and through the best minds in the healthcare community from around the world. Our products and services are designed to advance the health and well being of people worldwide.
1. What's the core philosophy of Vycor Medical in designing, developing and delivering the neurosurgical and neuro-therapeutic solutions?
Our core philosophy is to bring to market devices and therapies that address significant needs across multiple disciplines by working directly with and through the best minds in the healthcare community from around the world. Our products and services are designed to advance the health and well being of people worldwide.
All our products and therapies are evidence based, what I mean by that is that they are supported by rigorous clinical data they are designed to be minimally invasive and have regulatory clearances such as FDA and CE marking.
2. What has Vycor Medical got to offer for patients suffering from vision loss due to neurological trauma?
Substantial numbers of Americans therefore suffer from a visual disability resulting from neurological brain damage. The impact on their daily lives is dramatic, and is the difference between a person being able to be home alone, cross the road unaided, drive, shop or read. NovaVision's portfolio of therapies is specifically targeted to help these people, to both restore and compensate for this type of vision disability. Our therapies are designed to be done in the comfort of the patients home however we also have clinic based professional models. The benefits of the products can best be understood by reading the many testimonials we have. We recently had one of our patients Carole give her life changing experience on several radio stations, she is one of many patients that were told by their physician that there was nothing that could be done for them, and were even sceptical of our therapy, but thankfully she never gave up hope and after her 6 month treatment she regained 91 % of her vision.
3. What are Vycor Medical's recent advances in manufacturing computer-based light stimulation therapies?
We have recently launched our web deliverable therapies consisting of both our lead Vision Restoration Therapy and in the same therapy suite we also have our newly developed NeuroEyeCoach Compensation Therapy that complements our VRT.
Restoration: aims at improving visual sensitivity within the blind area by repeated stimulation, allowing patients to detect objects within the blind field. Examples of this type of therapy include NovaVision’s Vision Restoration Therapy (VRT) which is the only FDA Cleared therapy to our knowledge targeted at the restoration of lost vision from brain damage such as that resulting from Stroke.
Compensation: patients learn to direct their gaze towards the affected area bringing previously unseen objects into sight thereby allowing the patient to make the most of their remaining vision. NeuroEyeCoach is an example of this type of therapy
4. What is the significance of the product, 'NovaVision Web Deliverable Therapy Suite'?
The new web deliverable therapy suite that has just been launched is priced at $900 that is affordable to the masses. We believe this is the most affordable clinically supported comprehensive therapy suite available on the market to address visual disorders from neurological brain damage.
5. How does Vycor Medical strive to produce robust yet affordable solutions for neurologically induced visual disorders?
The first point to note is that everything we do is rigorously clinically supported. We achieve this by working closely with our world-class scientific advisors and other physicians familiar with our products. Once the product is agreed, we have then been focused on how to deliver that product at the lowest cost to the patient. In this case through the internet delivery we have managed to largely eliminate the hardware costs otherwise inherent and pass on those cost savings to the patients.
6. How did Vycor gain the trust of Healthcare providers for ensuring safety and precision with the use of its medical devices?
Firstly our products are FDA Cleared. This means that they have gone through a substantial development program carefully controlled by Vycor’s robust quality systems that are then maintained to ensure safety and efficacy monitoring of our products.
Secondly both of our businesses have a wealth of clinical data that supports our products. VRT has over 20 clinical studies, NeuroEyeCoach is supported by 13 clinical studies and our VBAS has 7 peer -reviewed papers demonstrating its superiority.
7. How does Vycor work to collaborate with NovaVision in developing future products?
Just to be clear I assume you are asking how management of Vycor interacts with NovaVision in their new product development. Management evaluates all ideas that originate from NovaVision, its scientific advisors or outside physicians to try and identify potential new products and product extensions. We typically work with direct scientific input, as well as a dedicated development team.
8. What does the recent HealthSouth-Vycor agreement mean to patients in the network hospitals?
HealthSouth trialed both our Vidit Diagnostic product and NeuroEyeCoach therapy center model product for many months in several sites and collected feedback. On the basis of the feedback HealthSouth approved our products to be made available in their network.
We have placed VIDIT and NeuroEyeCoach products with several HealthSouth hospitals and are now actively marketing them through the HealthSouth network.
The significance of this strategy is that most patients who have suffered a stroke or significant traumatic brain injury will touch a rehab center as an inpatient or outpatient at some time and that is the universe of patients that are eligible for our therapies.
Looking beyond HealthSouth, there are other rehabilitation chains in the US which also may be interested in providing more focused vision rehabilitation treatments. NovaVision stands ready to service those other chains also
9. With an estimated $4 billion market potential for NovaVision’s therapies in the US and Europe, what are your plans for the emerging markets?
We have just launched this product offering so initially it makes sense for us to focus our efforts on the areas where we have a physical presence namely the US and Europe which as you say are large opportunities in their own right. We have patent protection in a number of emerging markets and will be focusing in on those markets in due course.
10. What are the challenges that Vycor Medical aims to solve for the medical community under your leadership in the coming years?
To become the standard of care for the markets we are currently addressing and to broaden the areas of focus into new related areas.
Our neurosurgical division currently provides a solution for retraction of brain tissue and access to surgical sites in the brain. However, we have 510k clearance for spine and we see potential to provide solutions for retraction of delicate tissue and access to surgical sites elsewhere in the body.
We intend to make NovaVision the standard of care for vision loss from stroke or brain injury, but also use the great delivery platform we have now built to provide therapies for other issues suffered by these patients, such as reading and cognitive training.
