Endiatx is ushering in a new era in diagnostic & interventional medicine using micro-robotics inside the human body
How does PillBot work, and how will it help humans medically?
PillBot uses technology from the world of multicopter flying drones to swim inside the human stomach just as drones fly through the air. This maneuverability will let us direct PillBot™ like a “moving eyeball in the stomach”, turning hospital visits into Zoom calls for millions of people in the upper endoscopy patient population. Differential thrust via pumpjets let the doctor move PillBot forward, backward, up, and down in order to see the entire inside of the stomach.
Please note that PillBot™ is still under development and not yet FDA-approved. But once we secure the approval of the FDA, we will help patients and doctors find illnesses at the earliest possible stage.
What are pill cameras, and how is PillBot different? Does it use artificial intelligence?
Pill cameras travel through the body under natural peristalsis, creating a visual record of their transit through the body. While useful, their passive nature has kept them from truly replacing powerful active procedures like the upper endoscopy or colonoscopy. We are losing people who suffer from pancreatic cancer because it’s hard to diagnose at an earlier stage. People finally feel symptoms at Stage 4, but at this terrifying last stage, we fail to save 97% of the people whose disease states we identify. Earlier diagnosis using PillBot will save human lives. Rather than a traditional passive camera, PillBot will act as a moving eyeball that the doctor can maneuver in order to make an early and easy diagnosis. You swallow PillBot just as you would swallow a multivitamin pill, without any sedation and with no preparation other than skipping one meal and drinking a couple glasses of water. Our actively moving robot pill gives doctors the ability to explore patient anatomy in real time. Further, artificial intelligence will be incorporated within PillBot to reduce physician workload. AI will take care of the boring tasks and cross-check human work, allowing physicians to focus on the most complicated problems.
What is the vision and mission of your company?
Endiatx envisions a world where micro-robotic surgeons travel everywhere in the human body, diagnosing and curing disease. We want to go all the way to rice grain size and even smaller – we want to do brain surgery! But we feel that the human stomach is the perfect place to begin this adventure. Just drink some water, swallow PillBot™, and go on a fantastic voyage with your doctor over a Zoom call.
What’s the future of micro-robotics within the human body?
There is nothing trivial about micro-robotics in the human body! We certainly have our work cut out for us in developing tiny swimming robot pills for the stomach. But the lifesaving and commercial opportunities become clear when we consider the alternative: bringing you to the hospital, knocking you out with drugs, and jamming a tube down your nose or throat. If we can demonstrate Safety and Efficacy in visualizing the human stomach over a Zoom call, we think we are onto something big. Our goal is to make having a quick look around ten times easier and cheaper than what a patient would typically go through with today’s standard of care.
Does PillBot have side effects or medical risks?
With our current technology, the radiation concern would primarily be a question of broadcasting our live video signal through human tissue using low frequency radio (400–1000 MHz range). Radio waves at these frequencies have been used safely for several decades by passive pill cameras. From a basic safety perspective, it’s very important for us to ensure that our robots do not break apart and spill their electronic contents inside the body. To that end, we make our shells from aerospace grade polycarbonate and similar engineering plastics and test them extensively to make sure that we cause no harm. We should note that, as our robots get smaller and smaller, we might eventually explore using tiny nuclear power cells! This would represent a truly new chapter in micro-robotic technology, but it’s only on the drawing board at this time. For now, we hope people will think of PillBot™ as a friendly little battery-powered swimmer that helps their doctor have a quick look around in their stomach.
What are the certificates or approvals provided to your company by the medical council?
We think PillBot™ will probably receive a Class II rating by the FDA, and as such, we will be expected to conduct very serious clinical trials to bring into harmony three critical factors: we need to conclusively prove that our technology is Safe, Effective, and tied to a real clinical indication for use. We think that having a look around the stomach probably makes sense as a beachhead clinical indication. We should be clear that, at this stage, most of our work is going into getting these robots to function on the laboratory bench! The next few months will be extremely exciting for us.
What’s the CEO’s personal story?
Our Co-Founder and CEO, Torrey Smith, has 17 years of experience in the med device startup scene in the San Francisco Bay Area.
He has been fortunate enough to experience three successful exits (in Endometrial Ablation, Atherectomy, and Vascular Closure). Originally an aerospace engineer, he is passionate about merging the worlds of Deep Tech and Medicine, because we all deserve to live in a world where people can thrive and be healthy together.
“A Pill like rice grain will play a role as digital surgeon doctor”