MedCognetics is a company that provides an advanced AI software platform that integrates into the radiology workflow. Pulse 2.0 interviewed MedCognetics President and CEO Debasish “Ron” Nag to learn more about the company.
Debasish “Ron” Nag’s Background
What is Debasish “Ron” Nag’s background? Nag has worked in the Automotive, Communications, Personal Electronics, and Healthcare market verticals in both corporate and entrepreneurial roles. And He has run P&L for various product lines including Texas Instruments’ Mobile Processor Business, a $835M per year line of business.
Nag held a variety of marketing, product and business management positions domestically and internationally (VoIP, Audio, Emerging End Equipment, Wireless, Industrial, and Automotive), as well as in various telecom and wearable startups, and Cisco Systems. As a real-time embedded developer for wireless applications, Ron was also at Motorola and Samsung. In addition to technology, Ron has worked in healthcare business development at DaVita Kidney Care executive.
Currently, Nag is a dedicated entrepreneur in digital healthcare ventures. He has been part of neurology startups in the epilepsy space and now is incubating technologies in machine learning and artificial intelligence for medical imaging.
In his current role, as CEO and President of MedCognetics, Inc., he and his team completed product development and certification of an AI platform for breast cancer triage and detection. And MedCognetics is now deploying its service worldwide.
Nag received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Oakland University and an MBA from Southern Methodist University.
Formation Of MedCognetics
How did the idea for MedCognetics come together? Nag said:
“I am an Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) for the University of Texas System, in turn, I primarily work with the University of Texas at Dallas and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (UTSW). As an EIR, I was introduced to the UT Dallas Quality of Life Lab which was led by Dr. Lakshman Tamil. He was working on AI detection of cancer in medical imaging systems. I worked with Dr. Tamil and his PhD candidate student (who later became the CTO of MedCognetics) to translate this engineering research into a practical solution back my clinical and data/patient case support/guidance from another UT campus, UTSW. The name of the company is an abbreviation of our mission “To Provide Medical Cognition to a Physician to See the Unseen” – MedCognetics.”
“My primary responsibility is being a player-coach that is on the field with my team, and helping to facilitate the needs of this group of talented engineering and clinical professionals to accomplish the stated mission.”
Favorite Memory
What has been Nag’s favorite memory working for the company so far? Nag reflected:
“By far, it is the patient impact we are having that leads to superior clinical outcomes all over the world – especially in places such as India and Sub-Saharan Africa where advanced medical care is extremely limited in availability and accessibility.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Nag explained:
“Breast Cancer case triage, detection, and risk prediction.”
Challenges Faced
What challenges have Nag and the team faced in building the company? Nag acknowledged:
“The challenge we faced early on, is one that continues to plague the AI medical industry – AI Bias. AI Bias in this context is training an AI medical system on a specific demographic of patients, which then does not represent patients worldwide. For example, if you train an AI algorithm in a Tier 1 city in North America, that system will fail in another part of the world or that world’s given demographic, like Asia, Latin America, or Africa. We overcame this challenge by creating a worldwide ecosystem for sourcing patient cases – it helped that we had ties to a world-renowned university system (The University of Texas System and its 15 campuses state-wide).”
Evolution Of MedCognetics’ Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Nag noted:
“We have had to add different modes of accessibility to this AI service. Not all parts of the world have access to the Cloud, in turn, we had to offer our services, over the web, on-premise, and embedded in equipment.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Nag cited:
— November, 2002 – First FDA Clearance
— January, 2023 – NIH $750K Grant for Unbiased AI in Healthcare Services
— March, 2024 – USPTO First Patent Grant for Essential IP for Unbiased AI Systems in Breast Cancer
Customer Success Stories
After asking Nag about customer success stories, he highlighted:
“We have deployed in four Nigerian university hospitals with our web-based solution and we have also been working with NM Medical in Mumbai India with Dr. Shilpa Lad – these two deployments have screened thousands of patients of varying ethnic diversity in a consistent manner.”
Funding
When asking Nag about the company’s funding, he revealed:
“We have been funded via private investors – mostly physicians and radiologists that want to use our technology for their patients.”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Nag assessed:
“Global AI in medical imaging market size was $763 billion in 2022, growing to $14 trillion by 2032”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Nag affirmed:
“MedCognetics has solved how to deliver unbiased AI cancer detection worldwide in various application modalities (cloud, web, on-site, and embedded)”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future company goals? Nag concluded:
“Partnerships, more deployments, and expanding beyond breast cancer detection.”
Additional Thoughts
Any other topics you would like to discuss? Nag concluded:
“Yes, I would like to highlight and discuss how MedCognetics is focused on superior patient outcomes, and how everything else aligns around that – it is not about, AI, tech, or some buzzword of the day/week/month/year – it is about making an impact that leaves the world in a better place than we found it. Not something that most startups talk about directly.”
