Who Are These Startups
Revolutionizing Surgery: AI-Powered Vision Enhancement with Vope Medical
In this episode of “Who Are These Startups,” host Startup Coach sits down with Amy Lorincz, CEO and co-founder of Vope Medical, a groundbreaking startup in the healthcare industry. Vope Medical is developing an AI-driven software that aims to improve vision during minimally invasive surgeries. By leveraging computer vision, they eliminate the need for manual lens cleaning, ensuring seamless and efficient surgeries. Amy shares the startup’s journey, from identifying the problem through interviews with surgeons to their unique solution. Tune in to learn more about Vope Medical’s mission to enhance surgical procedures for both surgeons and patients.
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Automated Transcript of Vope Medical Who Are These Startups Podcast
The Startup Coach
Welcome to Who are the startups, podcast shorts featuring founder interviews of Canadian startups. Welcome back to who are the startups I am the startup coach founder front of starts. And with me today is Amy Lorincz, CEO and co founder of Vope medical. Welcome, Amy.
Amy Lorincz
Thanks for having me.
The Startup Coach
What does Vope medical do
Amy Lorincz
so we are developing an AI driven software that improves vision and minimally invasive surgery. This is compared to a mechanical cleaning process where a surgeon has to physically clean a camera lens, we’re taking a different approach and leveraging computer vision to clean the image feed that the surgeon sees so that surgeries can go on seamlessly and efficiently.
The Startup Coach
Is it for a specific type of hospital a specific type of surgeon.
Amy Lorincz
It is for surgeons and patients and this is any surgeon that is performing endoscopic procedures, so procedures that require a small camera lens to see a picture of the surgical site. So for them, we’re really solving the problem where as you can imagine, if you’re performing surgery and can’t see what you’re doing, it’s highly stressful and disruptive. And surgeons really want to focus on the procedures they’re performing in their patients. So solving that problem for them. And then on the patient side with our software, we can actually reduce the time that they spend in surgery. So that’s better from a healing perspective and patient safety perspective. So really developing the software for the surgeons and the patients.
The Startup Coach
What is your startup story.
Amy Lorincz
This startup started from a surgical innovation program at McGill, we interviewed 30 minimally invasive surgeons found that vision as a problem were typically 37% of the total time in surgery, surgeons can’t actually see clearly what they’re doing. So from there, we decided to address that problem with a different approach that is currently not on the market, and really validated that problem with them. And the product we’re solving for using a computer vision approach and a software cleaning approach to cleaning this lens contamination. And from there really brought on different researchers on our team. So we have a PhD researcher Dimitri, who’s our CTO from Mila, also Martin on our technical team to help us with the software development side of things. So that’s pretty much how we started and where we’re at right now. What drives you, I have a background in industrial engineering. So I’ve always been really interested in optimizing processes and systems and I also have a really big passion for the healthcare industry and making improvements there. So those two coupled and finding a solution to a persisting problem in the space that hasn’t been solved yet is super motivating. For me, I think we have a chance to make a really big impact and surgery for patients and surgeons. So thinking about that really, really drives me in the journey.
The Startup Coach
How do you define success,
Amy Lorincz
I would define success in terms of our product to completely reduce all scope removals due to contamination such as fog, or smoke. So completely removing the need to actually take the camera out from the body and interrupt the surgery, that would be really huge for us. And then also to make sure that all of the distractions that arise from cleaning a camera lens can be reduced as well so that surgeons can stay completely focused on the procedures that they’re performing.
The Startup Coach
What is your business model?
Amy Lorincz
We are leveraging a licensing revenue strategy. So there are optics companies that manufacture the camera systems. And since we’re purely software based, we have a module that integrates with these existing systems that are on the market. And so our plan is to license our software to these companies who have the the in with the hospitals already and the marketing reach, since we offer a competitive advantage to them in terms of what they already offer and then improving their current offerings. So licensing strategy, and our product can also be applied to any type of endoscopic surgery, which is really exciting. And that’s why we’re taking that licensing approach.
The Startup Coach
What is your funding situation?
Amy Lorincz
Right now we’re currently operating on non diluted funding that we have received through various pitch competitions in the Montreal startup ecosystem, but in order to unlock asked the extra non diluted funding that exists from the Quebec government and the Canadian government, we’re looking to raise 750k and diluted funding sources. So right now we’re starting the process with reaching out to angel investors and VCs, and also venture studios in the US, as well as venture funds. As part of the optics companies that I mentioned to our customers.
The Startup Coach
What’s your biggest learning as a founder,
Amy Lorincz
I would say, pivoting and being comfortable with pivoting as you develop your product not being too attached to one idea or feature or segment of the market. Because as we have been validating our product and testing the use cases, with the surgeons and the customers, we have had to change our path. So really learning to be flexible, and also be comfortable with being agile in your product development, depending on what the market truly needs.
The Startup Coach
What’s your biggest lesson in pitching your startup?
Amy Lorincz
That is, yeah, a fun question. It’s been really great pitching and being able to win funding from that process, I would say threw out the my time pitching. We’re currently incubated with Suntec. And also next AI who’ve been able to provide a ton of amazing feedback to us. But that also means there’s a lot of feedback from many different people. So making sure that you don’t try and integrate every single thing that every person says otherwise, it’s really difficult and a long process to truly integrate that. But collectively listening to all the feedback and trying to integrate it in a way that makes sense and being able to keep things in the presentation that people are interested by. And I think that’s a big part of the pitching process. Do you have any tips for founders, I think us interviewing 30 surgeons, before we even thought of a product idea was really beneficial, we were able to find out that there was a true need or a problem that had to be solved. And in order to build on that and also come up with a product idea. Having that initial feedback really helped us and also allowed us to get buy in in the pitch competitions as well. So making sure that you’re continually validating with your customers and your end users to make sure that it’s something that they want. Otherwise, you may not be able to sell your product, which at the end of the day is I think what we’re all working towards
The Startup Coach
what’s one book every founder should read,
Amy Lorincz
I would recommend 4000 weeks time management for mortals by Oliver Berkman. For me, that book was really great, because before I went full time on my startup, I was working full time doing a master’s doing my startup and another side project. And it talks about having a finite amount of time and dedicating yourself to what is truly important to you. And really putting all your all into it, which I think can be scary sometimes, but could also have a high chance of rewards. So putting that into perspective of how you spend your time and where you want to spend it. I would recommend that book.
The Startup Coach
Where can our listeners connect with you and Vope medical online,
Amy Lorincz
you can check us out on our website at www.vope.ai or on LinkedIn. We can be found at vope medical, and then also by email amy@vope.ai.
The Startup Coach
And all those links will be in the show notes for those listening on the podcast. I really appreciate you taking the time out of your busy day to be part of who are these startups.
Amy Lorincz
Great. Thanks so much for having me.
The Startup Coach
This has been Who are these startups? Find out more at who are the startups.com and check out our live events at Torontostarts.com/events
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