2 Bulls Bonus: Dr. Adams, Ventripoint Diagnostics CEO
This week in the China Shop, we are joined by Dr. George Adams, CEO of Ventripoint Diagnostics (TSX: VPT, OTC: VPTDF) . Listen along as we learn more about VMS+ as Dr. Adams thoroughly explains how the heart imaging software works and why it is leading the competition. We also dive into Dr. Adams' past experiences and philosophy's as well as asking him questions summited to us via stocktwits. Unfortunately, we were unable to get through all the topics we hoped to discuss, but that just means we'll have to schedule a part II!
2 Bulls in a China Shop: Recorded on 09/07/21
Listen now on all major Podcast distributors!
TRANSCRIPT
SPEAKERS: Kyle Hedman, Dan Leeson, Dr. George Adams
KH: You are listening to an entertainment program put together by a company called Financial Ineptitude. Anything said on this show is not an endorsement, or professional advice. Would you really want to tell a court of law you were suing us because you thought taking financial advice from two idiots on a podcast put out by Financial Ineptitude was a good idea? Really? Clown hat, smiley face.
DL: Financial Ineptitude presents 2 Bulls in a China Shop. You can find our podcast at 2bullsinachinashop.com, or just search 2 Bulls in a China Shop wherever you stream your podcasts.
DL: Well, hello and welcome everyone. Welcome to the china shop. You made it, get inside we got a big fire sale today. I'm shopkeeper Dan, with me as always is Kyle creator of financialineptitude.com. We've just given Kyle a big promotion today. He's the new Junior secret agent valet?
KH: Dan, this is professional.
DL: What?
KH: Dan, this is a professional interview.
DL: Oh, and we do those differently?
KH: Yes, we do differentiate. We have Dr. George Adams with us, CEO of Ventripoint.
DL: Okay, let me put on my professional face.
DR. ADAMS: Hello.
KH: There he is. Okay, good, he is here.
DR. ADAMS: Make sure to say (inaudible).
DL: Yes. Yes. Thank you for joining us. And how are you doing today?
DR. ADAMS: I'm doing very well. Thank you very much. I'm, we're having lots of good things going on, so it's always fun.
KH: So Dr. Adams, can you tell us a little bit more about Ventripoint? How long ha- you've been with the company for almost 10 years at this point now, I understand?
DR. ADAMS: Yes, that's right. It was located in Seattle, where the technology was developed. It's artificial intelligence technology that allows us to look at a conventional cardio echo, echocardiogram, and figure out a better way to analyze it and get more information, that the scans use. So that stuff was developed in Seattle. And the company invited me to come and be on the board. And then it invited me to come be the CEO, and so we started putting equipment out, and refining the technology. And then about four or five years ago, we moved back to Canada because I'm a Canadian. And it was just getting too expensive to compete with Google and Microsoft in Seattle, so we moved it back where we could get good talent and not go bankrupt in the process.
KH: I was stationed in Seattle for about four years when I was in the Navy. Very nice and wet.
DR. ADAMS: Liquid sunshine as they call it.
KH: I know right? So where in Canada are you guys located now?
DR. ADAMS: Toronto, yeah.
KH: Toronto, okay. Wow, that's a good spot to be.
DR. ADAMS: Oh, yeah, Toronto is a great spot.
KH: So I see that you, it's listed on your blog that you've been the CEO of seven different companies, and I think you also stated that all of those companies have made positive returns for their investors. That's, that's one heck of a track record.
DR. ADAMS: Yeah.
KH: Yeah. Why do you think you've been so successful?
DR. ADAMS: Well, I don't give up, I think that's you know, the real one for an entrepreneur is, you can't give up, you know. And I listen hard to what people tell me to do, and then I make my own decision, so I think that helps. I you know, I motivate the people who work for me, and you know I always work on things that are life sustaining or lifesaving. So that's, you know, that's a big motivation, you know. If you can communicate to your people, your shareholders as well as your employees, that you know we're all on a mission here, and the mission of the Ventri- like, for example, a mission for the Ventripoint is to make cardiac diagnostics better for everybody worldwide, and especially for children. And so you know, because the only way you can get a really good analysis done of your heart, if you've got a bad right heart or, or a bad left atrium, or right atrium, is an MRI, and you're two hours in the machine. So you can imagine being a kid or a toddler or even a baby, even about 40% of adults, don't make it to the end of the second hour in the MRI.
KH: My wife couldn't do it.
DR. ADAMS: (Inaudible) I'm not about to do it. Anyway, so the whole motivation here was to say, hey, you know, why can't you get, you know you've got the same images, you're taking slices through the heart with a mag- MRI with a magnet already, and you're taking slices to the heart with sound, why can't you just analyze the sound ones and get the same results as you get from an MRI? And so that was the kind of like, why can't you do that question. And we said oh I don't see a problem with that if we use sophisticated algorithms and we, and so, sure enough, we were able to do that, the company was able to do that. I arrived 10 years ago when they kind of licensed the technology out of the University of Washington and were trying to figure out how to commercialize it and turn it into a real product. And so we've been at that for last 10 years. We're on a third version of the product, it's now super user friendly. I've been through the FDA three times with it. First time they say it worked perfectly on right ventricle and it was equivalent MRI, and they said it couldn't be done and we did it. They were amazed. The second time was to say we want to expand it all four chambers of the heart. They said, okay, and we just gave them the data, they said yep, they're okay with that. And the third time was just minor modifications to version two (inaudible) version three, but they were significant enough that we had to go back to the FDA and get their approval again. So we, it's been approved three times by the FDA, and the most amazing part, I find having been through this thing, like you said, seven times, is the labeling we got. And we got a label that said, the doctor can order up this test our test, whether we want, just because he desires to get the information. (Inaudible) okay, you're ready to go, that's it. So I ta- I tell that to analysts, because often analysts like okay, well, what so what are the restrictions on the label of your product? And if you're going to invest in a company, and you're really thinking hard about it, you should ask them that question. What's the restrictions the FDA put on on the use of your product? We have no restrictions, zero.
KH: Oh okay. Yeah. Wow.
DR. ADAMS: That's unheard of. So yeah that's, this is kinda fun. I mean, I've had seven companies, they've always been therapeutic diagnostic companies. The stuff I've created and commercialized has been used 300 million times in the last 35 years to extend people's lives. So and I'm the, was the Entrepreneur of the Year in 2007, I got to go to Davos and hang out with the kings and the queens and the chairman of the board and Glenn Close, and got roasted as a super person who saved all these lives. And so...
KH: Oh that's awesome.
DR. ADAMS: Yeah, so this one's close to my heart, because I don't think children should be stuck into MRI machines, anesthetized basically, put on a ventilator, we all know about ventilators now because of COVID.
KH: Yeah.
DR. ADAMS: Not fun things. But that's what you have to do to anybody, any kid below like 10 years old, you got to know them out cold, put them on a ventilator, because every time you want to take a picture, with the MRI, you got to stop them breathing. So you just clamp the tube on it, on the ventilator so you force them to stop breathing, and you take a picture of their heart.
KH: Oh my god, that sounds awful.
DR. ADAMS: For two hours, and if the kid makes it through, now you know what's wrong with their heart. We get that all done in five minutes, you know, no ventilators. You know and you also get injected with contrast media. So no ventilators, no anesthetic, no contrast media, no lying dead still fortwo hours. You still have to hold your breath, when you take it.
KH: So long does it take to set up and get the initial images? Is that just the same thing as doing like an X-ray, or an EKG?
DR. ADAMS: I'd say the same as, same as 2D ultrasound. So standard 2D ultrasound exam of your heart, you guys are probably too young to have ever had it done. You know, but it's 16 views, it takes about 25 minutes, usually, to get all the views. You don't need all the views to recons- depending on what you're going after, if you're going a- say you're going after the left ventricle you need three or four views. That can take you know, three or four minutes. And then you can do the analysis, the analysis takes two or three minutes. Our expert users can get it done in under two minutes.
KH: How long does it take to train a user?
DR. ADAMS: That's the fun part, because it's so intuitive that it takes us maybe two hours to go from being somebody...
KH: Oh wow.
DR. ADAMS: And and I always have fun with this, like the cardiologists, you know, have spent years learning looking at hearts and trying to imagine the three dimensions and all that sort of stuff. And I always say that the best, the fastest people, we can train are artists.
KH: Right.
DR. ADAMS: Because artists intuitively think in three dimensions, right? We've been trai- we've trained artists in 20 minutes. 20 minutes.
KH: That's awesome.
DR. ADAMS: They go oh, yeah, I know what a heart looks like, oh yeah, here, ding ding ding ding ding, done. Yeah so your average cardiologist three hours, the average artist, two or three you know, half an hour.
KH: Do you have anybody that pushes back on it because they're so used to looking at the other charts? Or does everyone seem to really enjoy it?
DR. ADAMS: No, it's the same, the difference here is that you know, like when they go to analyze a normal 2D they would, and let's say they're trying to figure out a volume for the left ventricle, they would go in and actually trace the border between the wall of the heart and they would have to trace it. So you know, depending on how good their eye, hand eye coordination is, they would do a pretty good or bad job tracing that. Often the images are sort of blurry in certain parts of the frame, of the view. You know, the top half is just a big blur, or the bottom half. You can draw the bottom half and then after that you just guess at the top half right. But with our system, because of the AI, we go and just put a couple of dots on the bottom half go to next year you put a couple of dots on whatever it looks is crispy and you know exactly what is on here. By the time Three or four, three or four views and you got eight or nine dots, then the system will kick in and give you an absolutely precise size and shape for that chamber.
KH: I watched the video that you guys have on your website showing kind of the walkthrough of how to use that. So I'll put a link to that in the description in case anyone wants to check it out. It is really, really interesting to see.
DR. ADAMS: Yeah, so it doesn't take long to train people do it (inaudible) certified by the FDA and CE mark and Canada and China give you exactly the same results as you'd get from MRI, both ejection fraction, largest volumes sm- smallest volume, and to be just as, it ensures accuracy and just be just as precise as an MRI. So and that's another big difference between our system and standard analysis of ultrasound you get plus or minus 20%, depending on who does it. For standard analysis, we get like plus or minus 2%. So it...
KH: Wow.
DR. ADAMS: You know like everybody picks out the same high-fidelity spots, everybody goes oh there, I can see the wall and the blood there here here, nobody goes into the fuzzy zone and tries to guess where the wall is in there. So you get you get very good reproducing person to person and you get very good reproducibility, reproducibility to the MRI.
KH: So yeah, so if two different people look at it, they come up with the same image.
DR. ADAMS: Yeah, yeah. And that's one of the great advantages of the system when we when we talk to you know large cardiac centers who have you know, two dozen stenographers and dozen cardiologists, like, you know, they open up the file and they go, oh, I see Sam did this one. It's like (inaudible) file who did the analysis. And then yet, they do a, put our system in and they open up, they go, I don’t know who did this but it's perfect. And so and that makes a big difference.
KH: Yeah.
DR. ADAMS: Because actually the variability right now between one exam to next. So if you've got a chronic heart problem, ischemic heart failure, congestive heart failure, you've got a valve pro- regurge valve, if you're born with a heart problem, congenital heart disease, you're going to get looked at every six or nine, every six to 12 months for the rest, and right now the doctors don't have the (inaudible) say what is your, how was your heart looking six months ago? Because they go, well who knows what, who did that analysis, who knows? There's no point, don't even need to look at it. I'll just take the snapshot of where I got today, I'll analyze it, I'll figure out, well what a waste of time. So if you actually have the kind of precision that we provide, we can go back and look, you know, 2010, 10 years and say this is what the heart was like 10 years ago. Let's look into exactly what's happened over the last 10 years. Oh, I see what's happened to his heart. And so you can actually take advantage of all this historical data. And there's like a billion cardio echo grams, sitting in data files (inaudible) files all over the world. That's a billion chunks of data that you could use to figure out a bit more about it.
KH: And then you can go ahead and just grab all those and make a new image even though the image may have been taken 10 years ago?
DR. ADAMS: Yeah. So yeah, so we're working on the, we're working on an automated tool that would just go in there to our archive and just chug, chug, chug, chug through it, and, you know, do the and then, you know, build those trend lines so when the patient came in you just punch in George, and up would come the last 10 years of all my echocardiograms, and exactly what's been going on my heart instead of looking at the you did today and say, well, it doesn't look, well no, maybe it doesn't. That's what they do now. Yeah, so there's a lot there is a lot of improvement, which is what I said, our mission is to improve cardiac diagnostics worldwide for everyone especially children.
KH: Sounds like it's changed quite a bit over the last decade. And I should mention too I don't know if we said this already, this is the VMS+ system that you guys have developed, correct?
DR. ADAMS: Yeah VMS+ 3.0 it's the, it's the latest version we've got it in you know 16 hospitals worldwide, and they're using it on all sorts of patients. COVID patients, cancer patients, heart failure patients, children, adults all that stuff. So you know, it's we're s- early in the game here because I mean...
KH: Right.
DR. ADAMS: We you know, we there are, I mean we just announced not too long ago an alliance with General Electric Health.
KH: Yep, I've got that in my notes to quiz you on some more later.
DR. ADAMS: Well the point is, you know GE's got 500,000 ultrasound machines placed worldwide.
KH: Uh huh.
DR. ADAMS: Yeah, and we don't sell ultrasound machines, we just sell our system, which is an adapter basically turns your ultrasound machine into an MRI.
KH: Oh.
DR. ADAMS: So for 50,000 bucks, you can turn your $300,000 ultrasound machine into a three- or four-million-dollar MRI.
KH: Wow.
DR. ADAMS: For an extra 50,000 bucks. That's basically what we do. And so they're going to jump in here and start selling it rather quickly.
KH: Yeah.
DR. ADAMS: And, and, you know, and then we're going to need it because you know now, I don't know if you saw, the New England, there was an editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine two weeks ago by a public health professor from Harvard, who said that his best guess was there was going to be upward of 15 million people with long COVID in the United States when this COVID (inaudible) and they'll all have heart problems.
KH: Wow, that's terrible.
DR. ADAMS: And that will, there are going to be over 15 million people with a chronic heart problem induced by COVID, on top of all the regular.
KH: Right.
DR. ADAMS: There's just not enough ultrasound systems out there to do that, to deal with that many people, so we have to speed up the analysis and speed up the accuracy. There's no way you're going to put 15 million people, there aren't enough MRI machines in the United States or in the whole world to do analysis on some 15 million people, so.
KH: And hopefully it makes it more affordable for people too.
DR. ADAMS: Well, it is. I mean MRIs are like three or 4,000 bucks, right? And, you know, this is, you know, the reimbur- you know, echoes are $200 or $300. So, I mean, it's you know...
KH: Right.
DR. ADAMS: It's an order of magnitude you know cheaper than MRI and an order of magnitude faster and an order, just as accurate. So yeah, it's, it's, we're in the right place at the right time, because the world's going to need a better way to follow all these people with long COVID. We saw this movie 15 years ago with SARS, another co- a Coronavirus disease, and we're still, 15 years later we're still dealing with the 10% of people with, that got SARS and now still have chronic heart and lung problems. So hopefully COVID won't be, I mean I think the, that's actually the same number that the professor at Harvard had used, about 10% will have chronic problems. So I don't think it's going to be that bad, but I'm not a professor at Harvard, so what do I know?
KH: Well anybody gets, I think one person getting that's too much for getting sick with basically a flu.
DR. ADAMS: Well you know it's, in the UK, they set up dedicated, 40 dedicated clinics now in the UK for long COVID, they're setting them up in the United States everywhere Cedars Sinai, where did I read, I read something yesterday about setting up a new center in Calgary actually, in Calgary, they've just set up center for specifically for COVID pa- a heart, heart center. So it's pretty well known within cardiology community that they're going to be swamped with these.
KH: Right? Well, there's, it sounds like you have a competitor called Tomtec.
DR. ADAMS: Yeah.
KH: I think that's the Philips version?
DR. ADAMS: Yes.
KH: But it also doesn't sound like it's quite nearly as capable or reliable as yours. Are there any other platforms besides VMS that can actually you know, hang with it, that can do what you can do? Are you the cutting-edge leader?
DR. ADAMS: No, everybody went the other, everybody went to you know, conventional image analysis type techniques. Tomtec, Tomtec was bought by Philips four years ago, they've been working on trying to bring out a system that works on 3D echo, not 2D. Nobody does, nobody can do 2D, we're the only ones. And 2D is what's used worldwide. Nobody uses 3D for clinical purposes, because they still get too blurry, they're still just too blurry, and they're incomplete. You don't...
KH: Right.
DR. ADAMS: You don't even get the whole heart in that, you know 3D is you take a holographic, one holographic picture of the heart. Well, you know, the way the probes are and the angles and everything, if you have any kind of enlargement of your heart of any of your chambers, you can't get it all in the hologram. So now you're, we're back where we started here, you know you get halfway around the, the right ventricle, and oops, there's nothing there. Anybody's guess where this heart goes. Well, our system is able to fill in that, because we're working on a artificial intelligence system where we have a catalog of hearts, which have all sorts of different shapes. And we have this really good algorithm that tells you how to fill in the gaps, we're able to get the results. In fact, I was amazed, there's a study they just published out of Germany, it followed this, it gave them the prototype software for the 3D (inaudible). And he did I think 500 hertz with it, and he was, and he was able to get exactly, you know well MRI and 3D, and he was able to get the right answer on on 75% of them. So that's, that's plenty at least to me on, if you can get the right answer on 75%, get an answer, so you always got the right answer, but they got an answer and 75% the other 25% the you know, there was just too much, it was just too blurry and you couldn't figure out anything.
KH: Right.
KH: But that's pretty impressive, and that's enough to get it into the arena. So Tomtec's been working on trying to do that for 25 years, and they still haven't gotten it to work. And you know, I think Phil- you know when Philips bought them I thought they had, you know, they had would have had the resources to go after this. But again, they're using the wrong approach. They're using conventional image analysis and the images are just too blurry too often to work with conventional image analysis. You know, they're adding AI into it, and you know the images are getting better. I mean, Siemens, Philips GE are spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year on trying to make the hardware better and trying to make the images better, trying to clear up the noise. So you know maybe 20 years from now we'll have good enough images that the conventional image analysis will work, but it's not there yet. So we're really the, we're the only game in town right now.
KH: Did I I hear, I think I've heard rumors, or maybe that was a press release that you guys had, that you're in talks with Philips to maybe help them with their Tomtec, is there any truth to that?
DR. ADAMS: Well we're trying to open the discussion with Philips. I mean, you know, I mean, it's, I worked for Pfizer, I worked for DuPont, I mean, there's a lot of NIH not invented here, kind of psychology, right? So you know, Philips paid a lot of money for Tomtec, and it's going to take a lot of, you know, swallowing for them to admit that they got it wrong so.
KH: Well if they would have done it earlier, they wouldn't be in that boat.
DR. ADAMS: Yeah so you know, that's you know they're going to have to bite the bullet and come and open discussion. So we're in the process, and with Siemens as well. Now GE was the first ones to step up and say, yeah, we agree, we're never going to get this. This is never going to work the way we've been going at it for the last 10 years. You guys have figured it out. So yeah, let's let's form a partnership as well. So you know, we've got that product fully integrated into their platform. And you know, we have a few more steps to validate it, and become a certified vendor for GE. It involved you know, a big company process to become a certified vendor, but we're ISO certified, FDA certified all that stuff. So and when we get done then we'll launch. And so we'll be able to you know, GE, as I said, 500,000 machines worldwide.
KH: Right.
DR. ADAMS: That's a rough estimate. But it won't take long before we start deploying these things in hundreds. Yep. Yeah. And that's, the faster we get it done. The more we, the faster we change, distribute it (inaudible).
KH: So back to the agreement with GE, so you basically almost finalized it, you just have a couple more things left to do, is that the final acceptance testing?
DR. ADAMS: Yeah, final acceptance testing (inaudible). And GE is just, you know, they, it's a big company. They move at their own pace.
KH: Yep. I'm familiar.
DR. ADAMS: Well their, you know, their their launch budget for the first three months is going to dwarf my entire budget for the next three years. So you know yeah, it's but so far, it's been a great relationship so far.
KH: Once you do get that final acceptance testing, how long do you think it'll be before you start to see the the sales from that agreement on your financial statements?
DR. ADAMS: I really don't know. I mean, I haven't, you know, we've been really been asked not to talk about timing. With GE they consider that a competitive piece of information. You know they really want to go in there and blow the doors off of their competition. And so they're, I can tell you as they budgeted, it'll be a hell of a party. It's going to be a splash for sure. And, you know, we're the we're the prime thing they're bringing out, so it's going to be pretty interesting to see how the you know how their sales will react to it. We still have to train their salespeople. But, you know, we'll get to that. Like I said, we can train a cardiologist in two hours, and it won't take us long to train a salesperson. So one of the, some of the other applica- in like the applications (inaudible) you know, I think one of the things people don't realize is, you know, like, 30% of people that go through chemotherapy or radiotherapy or immunotherapy for cancer, come out the other side with such a damaged heart, that they have chronic heart problems for the rest of their lives.
KH: Oh my gosh, yeah.
DR. ADAMS: And in fact, the American Heart Association has now put out a formal scientific statement, it's their first ever. You can imagine, saying that if you've been to chemotherapy, and you're on the other side of that, you need to go see a cardiologist every six months for the rest of your life, because you're more likely to die from a heart problem than the cancer. And you know, they crunched all the data to be able to say that statement, make that statement. So cancer is a big application. I mean, when you think about it, you know, we've been using the same three drugs for cancer for 30 years. And you give them. they basically poison, poison your body for a week, and then they give you two weeks to recover, and then they do it all over again. And then it's cells that are most rapidly metabolizing and growing and working hard, that are most affected by this poison. The hardest working cells in your body are your heart cells. So it's not surprising that while you're killing cancer, you're also killing your heart. So you know, I think we have a machine (inaudible) are working hard to figure out you know if we can serve these people early and you know, do something to the chemotherapy or at least monitor them more carefully and adjust the, adjust the medications afterwards so that they can (inaudible) the heart. And again, its right heart problems, not just not because obviously, if a lung cancer you got, you know, the right side of the heart pumps the blood through your lungs and over to your left side, left side pumps it out to the rest of your body. So, you know, if you get any kind of back pressure on your right side, it goes into heart failure pretty quickly. You can die from right heart failure just as quickly as you can die from left heart failure. So, you know, you have to look after your right heart. And so and again, once again, we're the only game that can actually look at your right heart quickly, easily, repetitively over and over again, and tell you what's going on in a cost effective manner. So that's, we just have to keep deploying these things and getting the key key opinion leaders to talk about them at conferences and everything and, and we're really hopeful GE is going to be able to accelerate that process pretty significantly.
KH: It sounds like, sounds like it shouldn't have any trouble or it sounds like that's a really good agreement to partner up with GE.
DR. ADAMS: I mean, I know Pfizer bought one of my companies I spent two years and then for Pfizer buying companies and doing deals and whatever. And yeah, I spent six years at University of Toronto doing, setting up companies and doing licensing and all that stuff. So I've seen a lot of deals, and this one with GE is pretty damn good. I mean I am not allowed to talk about the details, but I can tell you that you know the few details I have like given off some of my my buddies who are in the business, they're all saying yeah that's a hell of a deal. I think you have to you know, whenever you're trying to do you have to understand what the other guy's motivation is. And you know you look at, you can you know, it's all public domain. I mean, you look at GE's, you know, record of innovation in ultrasound in the last 50 years and there hasn't been any. The last 10 years, 15 years, there's been no innovation in ultrasound, cardiac ultrasound, in the last 15 years mainly by not just GE Siemens, Philips, anybody, okay, it's we're doing the same stuff we were doing 15 years. They put all their hopes and prayers, and everything into 3D and it just has turned out to be too tough problem to you know, the electronics just aren't there yet. So you know, they need something to say, hey, this is something new and all clinicians in the world are looking for something new too, because they you know, they have bunches of, you know, hundreds of patients here they've been following for years, and they're still scratching their head about what's going on with their hearts. But I always say you know, the American Heart Association meets every year. It's one of the largest medical conferences in the world. I think like 60 or 70,000 people, there are only a couple places in United States like the Astrodome, or Houston or, or Dallas or places where a big enough convention center and enough hotels to hold the conference. And every year there's you know, 5,000 6,000 abstracts given papers, given by people who have worked for a year or two years or three years doing studies on people trying to figure out some aspect of the heart. And for every abstract that gets presented at the American Heart, I was a scientist for several years before I became an entrepreneur, and I presented at American Heart. For every abstract case accepted at the American Heart, there's 10 of them get rejected. So and this has been going on for 75 years. So you know, and it's going to happen next year. So you think we know what's going on with the heart? Guess again.
KH: Right.
DR. ADAMS: There are 50,000 abstracts going to go pouring into the American Heart this year to be presented again, from all these research groups trying to figure out yet one more time some aspect of the heart.
KH: You have, I think, about 124 scientific publications to your name?
DR. ADAMS: Yeah, something like that, yeah.
KH: What are the topics of those mostly?
DR. ADAMS: Well, I was an expert in blood surface interactions and real thrombogenesis, thromboembolism, so I was expert in artificial organs. So I did artificial hearts, drug eluting coronary stents and vascular grafts, heart valves, you know, aphaeresis machines, blood storage, all that kind of stuff. So anything where the blood would contact a foreign surface and start clotting and creating all sorts of grief, that was my specialty. So I wrote all the reviews and did a lot of work on that. I was one, I was actually the most well-funded scientist in Canada, when I decided to quit being a scientist and become an entrepreneur. And my wife said, you're what? You spent 10 years going to university to get a PhD and you spent two years (inaudible) and you spent 10 years becoming an associate professor, and now you're going to go do something else? But anyway, it's worked out.
KH: So, when you made that transition, like what, what made you make that leap? Were you trying to take one of your ideas and turn it into reality? Or was it another company that you just found that you're just good at leading?
DR. ADAMS: No, there was a cardiovascular, a cardiac surgeon (inaudible) who came to me and said he wanted to build an artificial heart. He wondered, and I thought, wow, there's there's a challenge for all my skills. I mean, I was trained as a fluid mechanics engineer, mass transfer engineer, I'm (inaudible) world authority on blood surface interactions and biomaterials. And I thought, boy, there's there's a challenge worthy of all my training. So I said, I'll take that on. So of course, the first thing I did is raised you know raised a great, the first thing you always do is raise the money. And I, you know, I didn't know how to raise money, I'd been a professor or and so, all my life, I had no idea how to raise money. So you know, but sometimes y- what you don't know is a good thing. And so I didn't know enough to know I w- it would have been hard. So anyway, I dug in, and eight weeks later, I'd raised $22 million from a whole bunch of different sources, government sources.
KH: And that's not knowing what you were doing?
DR. ADAMS: And I started up, started up with that $22 million and built the prototype, machine heart, and that's, that device (inaudible) heart has now been put in, they've been put in I think 7,000 people as bridge to transplant. And there's now they're doing destination implants now.
KH: You raised you raised $22 million in eight weeks, and you didn't know how to fundraise?
DR. ADAMS: That's correct, yeah.
KH: That's, that blows my mind.
DR. ADAMS: Like I said, sometimes you just don't know what, you don't, you'e just so dumb, you don't realize how hard it is. I think that and I think that kind of, is part of my philosophy of life, you know, like, you know, you shouldn't like, don't ever limit yourself. Like, let someone else limit you. So, you know, don't ever say I can't do that. Just go do it and let someone else say, told you so, right? Like who cares, right? I mean, like, fear of failure is is a really endemic problem that you need to get rid of. I mean, and part of that, you know, partial failure is, you know, we get, we get blasted if we fail, right? So part of my management style is, I mean, my secretary used to call it the, there are no consequences talk. But whenever I hired people that would work for me, I'd say, okay, here's the story, okay. You're empowered to do this, this is your job, whatever, okay? If I'm not around, you can't find me, you make the decision. Whatever decision it is, I'll back you up. You know, and, you know, if the shit hits the fan, I'm standing in front of it, and you're not going to get dirty, okay. I said, but one condition, if you ever come to me and say, I made that decision, because I thought that's what you wanted, you know, I said, I'm stepping away (inaudible). And so you empower people and you say, and then whenever people know, and every, things happen, you know, people make the wrong decisions, things blow up, even I make the wrong decision it's going to blow up in my face too, whatever.
KH: That's, that's some that that's almost like a systemic problem in today's industry. That's something that I've always had to deal with, when I was still working like for the steel mills that, I used to manage a group of electricians. And my big thing was, as long as you're making the decision for the right reason, I'd back you up.
DR. ADAMS: Yeah.
KH: But if I have to make the decision for you, then one of us is not necessary.
DR. ADAMS: Well, it's all, it works very well. And then I always have great teams, and they kind of make decisions and things happen, and I back them up and, and they all appreciate it. So I mean, and, you know, for whatever reason, I've been successful in being able to bring these products through the whole development cycle and into the commercial phase, and then sell the companies to, for profits to all my shareholders. So you know, it's all it's, it's a team effort. I always say, when an entrepreneur, entrepreneurs ask me know, how does it work? I say, well, you need a good story, and you need a better storyteller. I look for good stories. And I help I'm a I'm a very good storyteller, so that's just the beginning. You know, and so that's, I guess that's one, that's my magic power or whatever is that.
KH: Well, I want to circle back real quick to what you said about not being afraid of failure. Have you had any failures? I assume you have, you knot trying to, being part of 30 different companies that you kind of helped start.
DR. ADAMS: Oh, yeah, yeah.
KH: What would you say your biggest was?
DR. ADAMS: I've never had a failure as CEO, well I've always been CEO, but I've had lots of failures. A couple where I've been on the board and the CEO just didn't get it or wasn't that motivated or the technology just or the technology was based on something which was not, that was not properly vetted. So yeah, there's lots of lots of failures out there. And I mean, I mean, it's like getting you know, in venture capital you do 10 deals, you know, you got, you know, six of them are outright failures, two of them are walking dead, as we called them, and the other to that one success and one, one raving success and one, okay success. But that's all, that's enough to give you your 33% ROI. So, you know, it's, you got to bet, that's why you got to bet on doing something really meaningful. I mean, the other thing is, I would say, you know, don't be afraid of failure. And then after that is don't, you know, don't be afraid of risk, and the other one is pick on something is going to be meaningful, because I mean, at the end of the day you spend five years your life trying to getting somebody to work, and it works, and all it does is move the needle, you know, half an inch forward, that's not going to satisfy. You're not going to walk away thinking, wow, I did it, right. Pick on something like me, I picked you know, make an artificial heart.
KH: Right, yeah, that's, right.
DR. ADAMS: (Inaudible) it's been in 7,000 people. You know, I said let' try make a (inaudible) coronary stent, and it works you know, Boston Scientific bought it and put it in 10 million people or something. Now, there are better ones, so they don't use mine anymore. But that's okay. You know, you know, I've created an artificial medium for platelet storage, I mean how dumb can you get, like you know, that's not, doesn't sound very exciting. But the other stuff gets used 10 million times 10 million times in a year to put plasma off and put it back into pla- and platelets and we suspend them you know, and get all this extra plasma. I think it's like a billion dollars a year a plasma, they get off by putting replacing it with a salt solution that I created 30 years ago.
KH: Wow.
DR. ADAMS: Yeah, so I mean, it's like, if you're going to do, just do s- and everybody told me that was impossible. I used to say, I used to say to my boss, she's say, I think we should do this, I'd say, do you think it's impossible? And she would say why? Because it is not impossible, I'm not going to do it. I don't want to do it. With the (inaudible) she actually said, I think it's impossible. I said, Okay, then I'm going to do it.
KH: Nice.
DR. ADAMS: I think if you're going to do something, pick something that's impossible. That's that other people think is impossible. Because you know, especially if you're doing something in healthcare, and you're trying to save lives, you know I've always been in healthcare. Yeah, I mean, then people think you're a hero anyway, if you if you fail, then people are, good for you for trying. If you're succeeding, well people think you're, you're a magician.
KH: You mentioned the, selling multiple companies. Is that is that the long term plan with with Ventripoint? Are you planning to...
DR. ADAMS: Well, I don't think there's any way around it. I mean they're, Siemens, Philips and GE own the space, the three big companies. They own the space because they buy anybody and anything that looks new and exciting.
KH: Well, it's easier for them than actually trying to develop anything, right?
DR. ADAMS: Well, yeah. And they're all competing on market share. And you know, they've all got the same stuff, you know. So you know, it's like Ford, Chrysler, and Chevy all, and General Motors all competing, like, you know, like ours better than yours, whatever. So they're all trying to get something new into the thing, so they look different, right? So and as I said, last 10, 15 years, we've really been, nothing comes through the pipe that's new. So we're pretty, we're pretty, pretty new. Pretty exciting. The ability to do this is so unique. Yeah, I think that we'll get taken out. All we're waiting for is some kind of an adoption curve, you know. And trust me, that's when you get to, you know, obviously, I told you, I work for acquisitions for Pfizer, so I did call it the guys at GE and say, what's it going to take to, what would it have to look like for you to get engaged and right, and contemplate acquiring me. And they said they need about 80 to 100 sites using your stuff and saying nice things about you.
KH: And then if GE can do that for you and put your stuff in all their sites, then that's even better.
DR. ADAMS: I know out of 500,000 GE's got I think they they'd probably come up with 100 pretty quick. Anyway, so we'll see, I don't know. I mean, yeah, we'll get acquired, it'll happen. How quickly it'll happen, I don't know. The good news is, you know, we've had an exceptionally fantastic good year. You know, all our debt converted, we got all our warrants exercised, and we have two, two and a half years’ worth of cash sitting in the bank.
KH: Yep, I saw that.
DR. ADAMS: So we have all the money we need to hit that 80 to 100 installed adoption curve, even without GE's help. But GE is getting ready to do it anyway, so.
KH: I've got a question from the stock twit community here, that wanted to ask how you look at the value of the product to acquire. They said that 200 million has been stated in the past, but they want to know 4D wouldn't add more value.
DR. ADAMS: Oh, I think 4D will, absolutely, yeah. The feedback we're getting from the expert panel of top cardiologists from around the world who are looking at this stuff, and advising us exactly how to, you know what kind of measurements to make and everything, and what kind of patients to use on, and three, I think three or four out of that panel have already got the alpha prototype and are using it on cases in their institution, as a researcher.
KH: Oh, so you're already you're basically testing 4D now at this point?
DR. ADAMS: Yeah, so there.
KH: Wow.
DR. ADAMS: Yeah, every time we, they do another patient, they they're getting more and more excited about what kind of information they're getting. Motion analysis, 4D motion analysis. You know, when the heart pumps, it twists, and people don't ever characterize the twist, like...
KH: No, I didn't know that.
DR. ADAMS: When you know, when you, it's kind of like ringing, it's the last sort of high pressure point you know the high pressure, the last, you know the 120 over 80, that 120, 130, 140, whatever the pressure be, a lot of that is the heart twisting, just you're going to ring water out of a towel. The heart pumps as much as it can, and then it gives a little twist to get that last pump, to get that last blood out there to, before the valve closes and it starts the cycle all over again. And so people don't characterize you know, that twist, but that's something you know, there actually was a study done about four weeks ago in COVID patients, and they were able to correlate death, you know, likelihood of death to twist. So, unless the heart was able to do that, ringing at the end, the more likely the patient was to die from COVID. So, so they're now talking about doing that as a triage type thing. You know, the way they characterize it, the twist was, you know, juvenile, but anyway, we now have filed a patent on that proce- on on property, characterizing the twisting of the heart and a number of other motion, motion links.
KH: That's amazing.
DR. ADAMS: So I think when we bring that out that will revolut- again, that's going to add a lot of new information to the cardiologist and the world about what's going on with any particular heart. And maybe, you know, take a while, couple years before they figure out how to sort people and treat them differently based on that twist parameter, but it'll come.
KH:
You've mentioned COVID, a few different times.
DR. ADAMS: Well you said, the question was about value.
KH: Yeah.
DR. ADAMS: You know, I think where it stands today, you know, it's it's probably worth two or $300 million. Once the adoption curve is validated, I think a-start adding in 3D, the ability to analyze 3D automatically, which we're, we've already got a prototype doing that, and we already can analyze 3D. We're just training the conventional AI to do...
KH: That's the going back and looking at the records?
DR. ADAMS: No, that's for 3D. So that's about, okay, so right now, when you do (inaudible) you do 2D ultrasound, it takes about 25 minutes to get the standard 16 views of your heart. Four acoustic windows, and four views from each window, right? So you've got to move the probe around on your chest, you've got to get the goop on there, you got to get, the operator's got to figure out the best look and twiddle the knobs and all that, and get the best picture, and then do it again, do it again, do it again 16 times. So you know, we aren't going to have the luxury of doing that going forward. The value of 3D is you put the full, you know just under your sternum and you go click and you get a hol- 3D holographic picture taken. It takes five minutes, right? So you take that 25 to 30 minutes scanning image and that capture process, and you reduce it to two minutes. Now you can get a lot more people through the echo. (Inaudible) the fact COVID is generating a mountain more people who need to go through the co- COVID lab on a regular basis.
KH: Right.
DR. ADAMS: Right? So the world's going to need 3D to become a clinical tool. Well, the reason it's not a clinical tool today is because you don't get a good enough image often enough, a complete good enough and clear enough image often enough. So we don't need complete images we don't need good image we can do that analysis on on 75 to 80 percent of the 3Ds as they exist today. And that's means you can you can convert your whole echo lab over to 3D, and start doing you know 15 patients an hour instead of two.
KH: Yeah, that's impressive.
DR. ADAMS: So when that kicks in, then we're a multi-billion-dollar company very quickly.
KH: What's the what's the timeframe on that, I'm sure people are going to ask?
DR. ADAMS: Well, I'm trying to get the study organized to show feasibility you know that, that you know complete image good enough often enough question is is a feasibility study. So I'm trying to get a feasibility study off the ground in a couple of major centers. But you know COVID, COVID just makes everything so difficult.
KH: Yeah, it's kind of a kind of double-edged sword for you guys, it sounds like.
DR. ADAMS: It's like you know we've got the whole system fully, you know, remote now. We remotely install it, remotely calibrate it, remotely train people to use it, remotely do QC and all that on it but but we still you know, we still need the hospital to be functioning so they can generate a purchase order for it, and do all that you know, the receiving department to receive the product and not say it's not COVID go away. Yeah, so it might take a little longer, right? It'll get we'll get there. I don't see anything on the horizon that's even remotely close to being competitive. So, and you know, we've been doing this, I've been at this for 10 years, the company has been at it for 15 years, we haven't ever seen anything remotely competitive in 15 years. And so unless there's an absolute breakthrough in the image quality of 3D, until conventional image analysis techniques like Tomtec, Philips, will work, there's, you know, nobody's going to get anywhere close to doing what we do.
KH: Yep, I hope you hold out for that billion.
DR. ADAMS: Well, there's new opportunities. So you want to know, the blue-sky opportunity is hypertension. Okay, so actually, there was just a study published again, in the New England Journal, from China showing that if you aggressively, it's more, it's just like, one more study. But this is kind of interesting, you know you aggressively treat hypertension. So they took elderly Chinese people who had high blood pressure of 130 or more, and tried to bring them down to 120 or 110, and looked at the difference between getting them down to, you know, getting them down, you know, 10 millimeter, Mercury versus 20. And as you can imagine, there's a significant difference between how many people died in the next four years, versus whether they brought them down from 100, from 130 to 120, versus 120 to 110. You know, when I was getting my doctorate normal was 120 over 80.
KH: Right.
DR. ADAMS: That's now hypertension.
KH: Oh, what? I thought that, that's not normal anymore?
DR. ADAMS: No, that's hypertension. We change the definition of hypertension two years ago, worldwide, so it used to be 130 over 90, now it's 120 over 80.
KH: Oh, sounds like I need to go back to the doctor. It's been a while.
DR. ADAMS: Yeah, so they're saying you got to get your blood pressure down below 20 to 110, if you really want to limit your risk of dying from a major adverse cardiac event, like a heart attack or stroke or something in the next five years. And so, so the problem is, how do you you know, how do you get an accurate and reliable blood pressure measurement? This is a, you know it's the same thing, you go in there, your doctor, you go to the doctor's office, you walked up a flight of stairs, you sit down in the chair, they don't, you're supposed to sit there for five minutes, and totally chill out and...
KH: Well even just the stress of getting your blood pressure taken causes some people's to spike.
DR. ADAMS: Yeah. I mean, they're like, okay, get out of the chair in the waiting room, sit down here. The first thing you do is take your blood pressure, you're not sitting there for five minutes, believe me. The first thing they do is take your blood pressure.
KH: No, I know.
DR. ADAMS: And you know, and then you've got like, white coat hypertension, which is you're excited because you're at the doctor or you're sick already. So you know you got a temperature or whatever so your heart's racing anyway. So the whole bottom line is the doctor measures 130 over 90 and says, I don't think you have real hypertension, you're just excited because you're here to go home.
KH: Right.
DR. ADAMS: I'm not going to medicate you. Wrong, right? So yeah, so it turns out that the volume of your left atrium, and again, what we measure is volume and (inaudible). Volume in your left atrium is correlated to your, your know your average blood pressure for the last three months. So it's by simply measuring the volume of your left ventricle and, as an index to your body weight and mass, you can determine whether somebody actually has hypertension, or doesn't.
KH: Really?
DR. ADAMS: In, over the last three months.
KH: Oh, that's fascinating.
DR. ADAMS: So the question becomes, you know, how do we and so we can, you know, and so simply two orthogonal views, two views, two quick 2D views, and we can calculate, accurately calculate the volume of your left atrium. And the reason, I started, the answers got longer as we get got more into this.
KH: That's fine. That's all fascinating.
DR. ADAMS: So you understand a little bit the physiology of the heart. The last 20 percent of that kick is not only the heart twisting, to give you that last bit in the at the end of the cardiac cy- systole. But it's also the left atrium kick, gets, helps the left ventricle out, and it gives a little extra crunch at the end, too. The left atrium is very sensitive to what the peak blood pressure is, because it's finding that peak blood pressure at the last 20% of the pulse. And so that's why it's so sensitive, and it it doesn't recover as fast as the left, it's just a, it's a relatively thin muscle. And so it doesn't recover as fast as the left ventricles. The left ventricle can be stretched and recover, you know, almost instantly, whereas the left atrium stretches and you know, every time you have a hypertensive series of events, it stretches, and it takes a while for it to come back. So if you have them too often, it gets stretched and stays stretched. So I want to enable every doctor in the world, every GP you know, to measure left atrial volume and really start stratifying people for hypertension.
KH: Right.
DR. ADAMS: And that would take, and there was a study done at Columbia University a number of years ago that said it would take, in 2013 it would have taken $8 billion out of the US healthcare, if they simply found the people who really had hypertension and gave them a diuretic. A 20 cent a day pill, they would take $8 billion dollars out of the health care system by doing that. And then I'm sure you can double that, triple that number by now. And that was before high blood pressure was 120 over 80.
KH: Yeah. So I'm sure that number is higher.
DR. ADAMS: It's probably 40 or 50 billion now. So that's, to me that's the whole run, is to have an automated system that measures left atrial volume sitting at every pharmacy, every doctor's office. And find the people who have hypertension, give them a 20 cent a day diuretic pill, make them go to the bathroom, three or four times a day. And then they don't end up in the emergency ward with a heart attack.
KH: Oh, fascinating stuff. Man, I got a couple more questions from Stocktwits I wanted to try to get through but...
DR. ADAMS: Go for it.
KH: All right. Well, one of them was asking for some more details about your China partnership. How and when you do expect that to bear any fruit?
DR. ADAMS: Yeah (inaudible) China. And you know I always say I never never put a timeline and China in the same sentence.
KH: Yeah.
DR. ADAMS: So China's its own world right? I mean once, and to me, China's been a little bit, yeah, once it'll get going, it'll overwhelm us. Just anything done in China. I mean, they're building up their distribution network, they've got approvals. They, our joint venture partners are, we're raising money. They raised I think five or 10 million dollars a month ago, which they're putting the money in the bank account. Now they're ready to go. They've built up the distribution network, they've got the prototype, they've got the devices in eight provincial, eight top hospitals in eight provincial capitals in China. And they've been using them for a while. So they are, and they're working on a major contract with the government to, you know, for the government to buy hundreds of these machines and deploy them across China and areas. The thing you have to realize about China is it's, you know, they've got twice as much heart disease we do.
KH: Really?
DR. ADAMS: Yeah, the average, yeah the average admission rate in a hospital in China with car- for cardiovascular diagnostics they're at 24 percent. We're at 13 to 14 percent here in North America. So they have twice as many people in the hospital for cardiac, heart problems, than we do. And you know, and that's (inaudible) and they've got all this, they just can't control the Chinese people and they have these risk factors right? They're all overweight, they smoke, they have bad air, they've all got diabetes.
KH: Yeah.
DR. ADAMS: They've all got they've got all the risk, all top four risk factors and so they've got double, twice as much heart disease there. So you know, they know they've got to do something about it. And now COVID is kicking, you know if COVID kicks in there, boy that's, it's going to be a real, a real problem.
KH: Yeah.
DR. ADAMS: I'm hopeful that this year, I mean they've given us sales projections for this year, which are significant. Well, for that next, the next four quarters, not not the calendar year.
KH: Right?
DR. ADAMS: And you know, if they hit them, then we'll be seeing significant revenues coming our way.
KH: Do you have any concerns over China trying to, what do you say, reverse engineer your process?
DR. ADAMS: I don't really, because you know, it took us the decade to build those databases. They're all encrypted and everything. I mean I'm sure if China can hack the Pentagon, they can hack us. But I mean, I think that you have to understand no we're, the (inaudible) we're in is one of the original (inaudible) group and so they help each other, and they you know, they've gone through the appropriate channels to make sure that they are aligned with the right people, so that other people in China, you know, don't steal, you know they have their own system around there. Our technology and our opportunities have been assigned to the right people.
KH: Good.
DR. ADAMS: And if anybody steps on them, they're going to whack them. So I don't think, you know that's the way it works in China. So I think we're, you know, we got the right partner. We're there, you know. It's just everything in China takes forever.
KH: Alright, last last question I got from from the Stocktwits community they'd like to know more about Dr. Macanovic.
DR. ADAMS: Sure.
KH: Yeah, they said there's like just a small blurb on the website about her. I think they were trying to get me to get her on the show with us but.
DR. ADAMS: We should fix that. Dr. M is a wonder worker. I mean, she's incredibly clever. You know, she worked for many years with a patent group, so she's very sensitized to, and getting, building our intellectual property policy. She's an expert at regulatory, so she's the one who you know, we've been through the FDA, Health Canada, China, Europe three times, and every time she just, they just put it in and it just goes through. So and she's you know, we're all on the side of ISO and FDA, GMP, all that stuff. So she's miraculously good at all that stuff, you know, she runs the company, and leaves me free to do these kind of interviews and things.
KH: I'm glad we're making good use of their time.
DR. ADAMS: Yeah, I can't say anything more, I mean, I guess we should upgrade her bio on (inaudible).
KH: Yeah, they like to know just a little bit more about her, it sounds like. Maybe she can do a nice, a piece. a type of interview like this where people can kind of get some more of her background.
DR. ADAMS: Sure. Invite her ba- invite us back and she will, we can do that. Absolutely.
KH: All right, well that's, we'll probably have to take you up on that.
DR. ADAMS: Yeah, no, she's, I think she, I think you'd enjoy talking to her about the nitty gritty of what goes on, yeah.
KH: Well, it was fun talking to you about just the mindset of what it takes to start seven different companies and be successful at that. That's, I mean, you're very accomplished, very impressive. I feel like I've learned actually quite a bit just talking to you about some of your different philosophies. So I really thank you for for taking the time to come sit with us.
DR. ADAMS: I'm happy to do it. You know, I think it's important that we stimulate all sorts of entrepreneurs, there's still lots of problems out there to solve.
KH: I think Dan might have been wanting to ask this question. If, we formed our own company, and I think we'd be willing to take a step back, if you're looking for an eighth company to be CEO of.
DL: Yes.
KH: Especially if you can bring that fundraising talent.
DR. ADAMS: First thing you have to do is tell me it's impossible. So do you believe your company is possible? If you do, then you don't want me.
KH: Well, normally we like to wrap things up a little bit of fun, but I think the best that I've got is that, you know Dan and I, I think we consider ourselves pretty resourceful, and then also have a brother who's a very good optical engineer. I was going to ask if you have any simpler inventions or patents that you need developed, that you can give to us and we'll take a crack at it. 50/50.
DR. ADAMS: Optical engineering, eh? Well we looked at a number of optical solutions for our (inaudible) but we could never find anything that will work as well as what we have. So we invented a more conventional gyroscopic approach. But it's (inaudible). So optical, I mean, there's lots of optical problems out there.
KH: Well, I mean, I was hoping for something more like you know, funny glasses or something like that. But if if has to extend lives, then we might be out of the running. Unless we can, you know, medicalize laughter, I think that's our best shot.
DL: X-ray specs that help the doctor see right into the body.
KH: Can you do that without burning out the eyeballs?
DR. ADAMS: Well, they use Raman spectroscopy to look at the surface and differentiate cancer tissue from normal tissue, and that seems to be working pretty well so. But you know you can't go more than about a millimeter in, so.
KH: Right.
DR. ADAMS: I mean even ultra, I mean one of the, even with ultrasound that, the reason cardiac ultrasound is so difficult is because your heart is way you know inside your body, so you need a lot of power, you need a lot of sound. And then of course this thing called the heart is smack in the middle of this big echo chamber called the (inaudible).
KH: Right.
DR. ADAMS: The more sound in, that you put in, the more reverb you get back out. That's why 3D is so damn hard to get any decent images out of.
KH: Well it sounds like you guys have made it work.
DR. ADAMS: Yeah, we have and that and that's why, you know I'm just saying, the body does create his own problems about you know. That's the reason why surgeons have been around for years is because ultimately all you got, or the only solution is to cut you open and go inside and fix it, right?
KH: They've been around for thousands of years, but they've only been really good for maybe 50. I wouldn't trust somebody from the 1800s.
DL: Right? Right?
DR. ADAMS: Yeah, well. Yeah, yeah those people used to think that blood was formed in your head and flowed down to your feet.
KH: Right, yeah, you've got too much blood, we need to let some of that out.
DR. ADAMS: Yeah, the reason why (inaudible) you let some blood out, you probably (inaudible) that's because your blood, couldn't make blood (inaudible).
KH: Yeah. All right, Dan, you got anything else before we wrap this up and let Dr. Adams get on with his, I'm sure busy day.
DL: Yeah, sure. Thank you again, George, for joining us. While I wasn't here, speaking during most of the call talking, I was able to hear most of it. Very grateful you've been here. Very excited about what Ventripoint is doing, your philosophy of business to improve lives. It's been an honor to listen and have you on here. We'd love to have you back and Dr. M with you.
KH: I'll make a (inaudible) we'll edit that in post.
DR. ADAMS: All right, well the good news, Dan, is we taped it for you.
DL: Oh yeah, yeah (inaudible).
DR. ADAMS: We taped the show so you can go back and listen.
DL: Oh, thank goodness.
KH: All right, what's the stock ticker, for people who want to take a look at that? We probably should have mentioned that at the beginning.
DR. ADAMS: Victor Peter Tom, VPT.
KH: VPT, all right, check it out guys.
DR. ADAMS: It's on the TSX Venture Exchange.
DL: And on the American exchanges, that's VPD- sorry. VPTDF.
DR. ADAMS: Yeah, it's on the OTC, and same Victor Peter, Tom, DF.
KH: VPTDF, okay.
DR. ADAMS: Yeah, yeah, we're going to be moving up to the QB in a couple of weeks. So people will be able to, it'll be easier for people to trade it, and we're getting registered on the digital, you know, archive, digital banks or you know, don't have to deal with share certificates or any that kind of stuff, so it will just buy and sell like everything else.
DL: Wonderful.
KH: Hopefully we'll see you on the NASDAQ here soon.
DL: Yes.
DR. ADAMS: Yeah, I think if we don't get taken out, we'll probably be about, the NASDAQ next year.
KH: Yep. And if you're interested in learning more about Ventripoint, you can check them out their website at Ventripoint.com We'll have links to that in the episode description. And thanks again to Dr. Adams for joining us. Looking forward to having you back.
DL: That's going to do it for today folks, thanks for joining us. We'll be back at you soon. Until next time, happy trades.
KH: Thanks for joining us. You can find us off air at 2bullsinachinashop.com. That's the number 2bullsinachinashop.com. Make sure you check us out. Download us on any streaming network blah blah blah, you know what to do. Rate and subscribe.
DL: 2 Bulls in a China Shop is an entertainment program, and all thoughts and opinions expressed in the show belong to the hosts and not of any company. They are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual, or on any specific security or investment product. It is only intended to provide entertainment about stocks, and the financial industry of trading. If you make trades based on what you hear in the show, you assume all risks for those trades.
About Dr. George Adams
Dr. Adams is a scientist, a serial entrepreneur and a financier. His previous position was CEO of Amorfix Life Sciences (TSX:AMF) from 2005-2010. He was Chairman of Sernova Corp (TSXV:SVA) and President and CEO of the UT Innovations Foundation from 1999 until 2004. Prior to this, he held research and executive positions with Boston Scientific Inc, Pfizer Inc, Corvita Canada Inc., University of Ottawa and Canadian Red Cross, Blood Transfusion Service. He has been instrumental in founding over 30 companies who have raised $100 million and has been a Director of 10 venture capital funds and 10 start-up companies. Dr. Adams was awarded a World Economic Foundation Technology Pioneer for 2007 and TBI Company of the year in 2009. Dr Adams has 124 scientific publications and is a reviewer for major scientific journals, federal granting agencies and Centres of Excellence.
Links:
Ventripoint Company Website
VMS+ (Video of demo at the bottom of page)
Dr. Adam's CEO Blog
If you like our show, please let us know by rating and subscribing on your platform of choice!
If you like our show and hate social media, then please tell all your friends!
If you have no friends and hate social media and you just want to give us money for advertising to help you find more friends, then you can donate to support the show here!
2 Bulls Discord:
Latest Episodes