Deltex to focus on getting tech into more hospitals

Investors in oesophageal doppler monitoring technology company Deltex Medical Group heard how its technology was solving problems increasingly faced by hospitals on Wednesday, as they gathered for its annual general meeting.

The AIM-traded firm said hospitals in the developed world were facing “increasing pressure” to focus on patient safety, in part due to financial penalties or the non-reimbursement of costs associated with avoidable adverse events.

Chairman Nigel Keen said healthcare systems also faced increasing costs from ageing populations.

Avoidable haemodynamic complications - such as surgical site infections or acute kidney injuries - were expensive, Keen explained, and caused significant patient safety issues.

“Deltex Medical's ODM technology has been shown in numerous scientific studies to improve patient outcomes; reduce attributable costs; and by extension, improve patient safety,” he said.

“For example, the April 2018 FEDORA study showed a statistically significant reduction in complications and median length of stay for high, moderate and low risk patients.”

This year, Keen said Deltex Medical launched its ‘TrueVue’ monitoring platform in the UK, which comprised three haemodynamic monitoring technologies - doppler ultrasound; impedance; and arterial waveform analysis.

“We are waiting for regulatory approval to launch the full suite of TrueVue products in the US.

“In general terms there is a trade-off between the ease-of-use and the precision of the data generated from each monitoring technology,” he explained.

“The TrueVue platform enables clinicians to match the appropriate technology to the risk profile of the patients as they move through the hospital.”

Nigel Keen said that for example, high-risk, anaesthetised patients undergoing surgery could be treated under the guidance of the minimally-invasive and very precise ODM probe, whereas lower-risk, awake patients in a high dependency unit could be monitored using non-invasive impedance.

The TrueVue platform also enabled the Group to sell its monitoring technologies into a larger addressable market, he added.

“In the past, Deltex Medical was only able to provide its ODM technology to anaesthetists for use on anaesthetised patients undergoing surgery in the operating theatre or sedated patients in an intensive care unit.

“The TrueVue platform now enables Deltex Medical to market its haemodynamic monitoring technologies into a significantly broader number of clinical areas in the UK including accident & emergency, awake-surgery and obstetrics.”

Andy Mears, the firm’s new CEO, started with Deltex Medical as an electrical engineer working on the first prototypes of the ODM technology in 1989, Keen said.

“He has extensive practical experience of working with the ODM technology as well as discussing its development and application with clinicians working in operating theatres and intensive care.

“In his previous role he was responsible for developing the group's network of key opinion leaders and for the group's international division which sells Deltex Medical's technologies to hospitals in 40 countries via distributors.”

In the second half of 2018, Deltex Medical's management - led by Andy Mears - would be working on optimising the group's sales and marketing activities in order to maximise revenues and addressable markets.

Keen said the team would also be exploring new ways of addressing the challenge that many hospitals currently only used haemodynamic monitoring for high risk patients.

“Studies suggest that if this monitoring technology was extended to moderate and low risk patients, then the costs to the healthcare system would be lower and patients would benefit from reduced haemodynamic complications - many of which only become apparent later and often after the patient has left the hospital.”

In practical terms, Nigel Keen said that would involve focussing on three key areas - namely extending Deltex Medical's product offering on the TrueVue platform to facilitate sales into a broader number of clinical areas; focussing on the effectiveness of the group's sales processes to maximise the sales of high margin, ODM disposable probes; and husbanding Deltex Medical's cash resources while moving towards cash generation.

“More information on these initiatives will be set out in the group's interim results which will be published in September,” Nigel Keen concluded.