PIPRA: A Wrap-Up of 2022
As 2023 has started, we are excited by the multitude of opportunities ahead of us that can help propel our business forward. We want to share our 2022 business reflection with you, and some of our achievements and milestones along the way.
PIPRA's Solution
For those that may not know, Delirium is one of the foremost unmet medical needs in healthcare. It affects one in five hospitalised patients and is associated with multiple adverse outcomes including increased length of stay, increased hospital readmissions, medium-term cognitive decline, and considerable patient and family distress.
Our AI-based solution has the potential to make pre-surgical screening and precise risk assessment possible, contributing to the decrease in post-op cognitive impairment in elderly people. We aim to be the standard of care for preoperative risk assessment as a first step, then build a platform to improve perioperative care through personalized precision medicine. To achieve more traction on our product but also to spread awareness on the topic of delirium, we took our first product global, attending various conferences and exhibitions to showcase our innovative solution.
PIPRA goes International
Our beachhead market is Switzerland and with the support of Partners such as >>venture>> Startup Competition, Swiss Healthcare Startups, W.A. De Vigier Stiftung and Hirslanden we attended over 15 events in 2022 (online -pitching- events not counted).
While our tool is CE certified for use in Europe, we have begun building strong relationships with highly respected hospitals in the U.S. and Japan. We want to thank Innosuisse, Swissnex and Plug and Play Tech Center who have been a great support to us throughout the year with their know-how and network.. Their support has been instrumental in helping us evaluate the U.S. and Japanese market.
Our Highlight Events in 2022:
- March: Start-Up Summit, St. Gallen, CH
- May: Start-up Day Conference, Bern, CH
- September: Annual Meeting of European Delirium Association, Milan/IT, Swiss Anaesthesia, Interlaken/CH, Bits & Pretzels, Munich/ GER, BNEW Barcelona/ Spain
- October: BIO JAPAN, Tokyo/JP,
- November: IMD EMBA Cohort, Plug and Play Summit, San Francisco/US
(Pic. 1 Nayeli Schmutz & Jessica U meeting Advisor Henry Perschak at IFAS, Zurich; Pic. 2, 3 Benjamin Dodsworth & John Klepper, Bits & Pretzels, 3 - bumping into EMBA candidate Daniel Breum, Munich; Pic. 4 Nayeli Schmutz Panel discussion Mitsubishi Electric - Factory Automation EMEA, Pic. 5 John pitching Ifas innovation Challenge; Pic. 6 Nayeli Schmutz& Jessica U at MEDICA - Leading International Trade Fair Düsseldorf; Pic. 7 John Klepper at Bio Japan, Japan.)
It was an honor to attend these special events, connecting with like-minded individuals, and showcasing PIPRA's potential.
PIPRA celebrates Diversity
With successful international backgrounds in business, finance, medicine and science, our founders and managerial team are leading the way in the development of delirium risk prediction and diagnosis. Our team has a unique combination of skills and professional experience from the medical, neuroscience, clinical research, biostatistics, AI and business management sectors.
Our team spirit is backed by effective contributions from each employee to our company values. We strongly believe that our company culture strengthens both our professional life and the well-being of our employees, as you will see from this short extract from our company values:
Our team members are from France, Germany, the US, the UK, South Africa, Australia, Switzerland, and Belgium, and we are all working together with a shared purpose to transform the lives of patients around the world.
We are also committed to creating a diverse and equitable workplace.
We have more women than men working for us at PIPRA, something we are especially proud of. Giving womn equal opportunities not just to pursue, but also to thrive, in STEM careers helps narrow the gender pay gap, improve women's economic security, ensure a diverse and talented workforce, and prevent biases in these fields and the products they produce. We consider this to be another of our achievements at PIPRA.
Although PIPRA has a great team, we wouldn’t have come this far without the continuous support our Advisors. We have a valued Advisors scattered across the globe, working with us and sharing their expertise. For their continued support we want to thank them, with a special thanks to:
Rebecca von Haken, Henry Perschak, Peter Schmid, Luzius Steiner and Stocker Reto.
Great companies are built on great products – Product Implementation in Healthcare is complicated
To build our tool we performed an individual patient data meta-analysis collecting over 20’000 patients from over 22 studies. 8 studies passed our quality control (every patient assessed for POD) and were included in algorithm development. We found we can discriminate well between patients who experience delirium and those who do not with an AUC of 0.80 (95% CI: 0.77-0.82). We have received CE-certification and the algorithm is available as a software as a medical device.
Dr. Benjamin Dodsworth at an Internship at University Hospital Basel
To ensure that our products create the most impact, we need to understand more than the users. We have pilot clinical trials currently underway in three public, private and university hospitals, and our Co-Founder Benjamin Dodsworth has spent more than 100 hours at the University Hospital Basel, Stadtspital Zürich (Triemli & Waid), Hirslanden and Universitäre Altersmedizin FELIX PLATTER at internships during 2022. Our thanks to both Ben and all the supporting clinical sites for bringing us considerably closer to ensuring that the information from our tool is transferred to all necessary staff and that suitable measures are taken to prevent delirium.
We aim to be the standard of care for preoperative risk assessment as a first step then build a platform to improve perioperative care through personalized precision medicine. Post-operative delirium is just the beginning. Our software is a platform and our partnerships allow for both further data collection and for the development of new products.
We aim to become the market leader in delirium prediction, prevention, diagnosis and treatment and we are already working on our second product, for early diagnosis of delirium. To create our second product, we are actively looking for collaborators in delirium research to develop and apply effective digital solutions, wearables, sensor technologies (e. g. movement measurement, sleep, physiological parameters) to delirium. At this point we also want to thank our Co-Founder Nayeli Schmutz, who spent some of her weekends at the hospitals to ensure a smooth operation on the research site.
Conclusion
The past twelve months have been our most successful yet.
PIPRA has recently closed a successful seed round of international investment, led by the Start Angels Network raising €2.1m.
We also applied for more than six Awards this year and won a participation at the IFAS, the Pitching Competition at Plug and Play Europe as well as the W.A. de Vigier Award, one of the most prestigious prizes for young entrepreneurs in Switzerland.
We will continue to participate in future challenges to have our solution evaluated by market professionals, to gain new insights and to further extend our network.
In 2023, we will focus on the completion of the clinical trials that are currently underway, and investment in targeted research and development activities for our second product. We will further focus on sales activities in the Swiss and European markets never losing site of our mission of improving and saving lives.
2022 was a good year. 2023 will be even better! Our heartfelt thanks to everyone who has supported us along the way.
“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” – Helen Keller