1. Hello! What’s your current role in your start-up, and how did your past experiences take you here?
I’m the CEO and co-founder of NephTech, a medical technology company focusing on providing dialysis centres and patients a quick, easy, and non-invasive means of monitoring their special dialysis blood vessel which unfortunately is very prone to blockages at the moment.
I’m a biomaterials scientist by training and have been in MedTech R&D space for 8 years now. My previous A*STAR spin-off experience, which is also in kidney space, helps too! Yanling, my co-founder, who is medical device regulatory affairs trained is invaluable as we get to consider and design the medical product for regulatory approval early in the product developmental stage.
2. Which 3 words would describe you best?
Passionate, Persevering and Risk-taker
3. How did you come up with the idea? And what problem is your start-up trying to solve?
We were working on a dialysis related medical device spin-off from A*STAR 3 years ago and through the clinical developmental process, we realised that blood vessel surveillance is actually a huge problem for dialysis centres and patients. Approximately a third of national healthcare budget for this clinical disease is spent on blood vessel complications such as blockages. This is a significant cost component that could be better managed. After talking to our clinicians, they also acknowledged the urgency of the situation. And so we dived straight in!
Quick, easy, and non-invasive monitoring technique. Being a user-centric start-up, our approach has always been designing for need rather than technology push. Understanding real on-the-ground problem is a long and tedious process, we had interviewed numerous local dialysis centres owners, collectively representing 70% of local dialysis centres, to get a good sensing on how this solution should be integrated with their workflow. Needless to say, we will keep up this continual customer engagement in every step of our product development.
4. How long did your start-up take to finish development? (Before the product could meet the market)
Unfortunately, medical device industry is heavily regulated. While product development should complete within 1 – 1.5 years, we will likely get to sell in market 2.5 – 3 years from now after completing clinical trials and regulatory clearance.
5. What are your preferred platforms/tools?
Of course it’s Microsoft Azure! The Technical Evangelists have been of great help! They have been sharing with us the various Microsoft technologies that we tap into to help us achieve faster product development.
6. Have you gotten any interesting feedback from users of the app/solution?
70% of local dialysis centres! And Singhealth is now our clinical partner. Naturally, all these feedback has been circling around performance and usability which we are working hard on it now. End of the day, all of us are in it to make it better for our patients!
7. How do you keep yourself motivated, especially during the low times?
Passion and believing in what you do goes a long way. Of course when times are tough, I will grab a few pints of my favourite ‘creative’ juice (BEER)!
8. If you could go back in time when you first started, what would you have done differently?
Nothing. Team, team and team is the most important factor for the success of any start-up unless you have access to a ‘fountain of wealth’. Yanling and I had fought through hardship in our previous start-up so we knew each other strengths and weaknesses and this beats any other factors.
9. What’s next for you?
Build great products and touch the lives of our patients!
10. What’s one advice you would give to budding entrepreneurs?
The longest journey you will ever take is the 18 inches from your head to your heart. So make sure you have a passion for what you are about to do. While the fear of failing should never be disregarded, your willingness to fail is what gives you the ability to succeed.
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