Connected Medical Devices from France: Visiomed CEO Olivier Hua (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: How do you go to market? Are these sold as consumer devices? Are they sold as devices to doctor’s offices? How is the go-to market strategy structured?

Olivier Hua: Initially, our products were sold through pharmacies.

Sramana Mitra: A thermometer being sold through a pharmacy makes sense, but you’re talking about ECGs and stuff. That’s not a pharmacy product, right?

Olivier Hua: We had been selling essentially direct to consumers so far. For some of the products, we go to physicians and doctors who prescribe our medical devices. We can talk about the ECG for instance. It’s a mobile ECG. It’s a very small device. It’s something that can be carried by anybody. Typically it’s for someone who’s at risk with no means to recall anything. When he goes to see the doctor, the doctor cannot see and track the patterns. The idea on the ECG is that each time you have an arrhythmia, you instantaneously measure. You record your graph. Your graph is saved on the ECG, transferred to your smartphone. Then you can show it to your doctor. We usually sell direct to consumers through pharmacy. We now have direct to consumer through doctors.

Sramana Mitra: How does personalization work in that mode? You’re saying that you’re doing a connected device, which means that each consumer’s patient records are being recorded. For devices that are not consumer devices, how do you do that data recording in that mode?

Olivier Hua: Any device that we have is connected to an app, which sends information to the cloud. We do not store any information on the platform. They are all securely stored on the cloud and you are the only one who has access to your data. You cannot share the data with anybody except when you want to share them with your health professional or family. You can only share your data with the people with whom you decide to share them with.

Sramana Mitra: That’s from a policy point of view. I’m asking more, technically, how do you do it? How does an ECG device get some personalized data to your app?

Olivier Hua: When you take a measurement, there is a Bluetooth transmission that goes to the  app. Once the app receives it, it asks you to which profile within the app you want to assign the data to. For instance, I will take my ECG. It will transmit the data via bluetooth to the smartphone. The smartphone would ask me, “Who do you want to assign the data to?” I would say, “Olivier Hua.” The data would be stored on the cloud under Olivier Hua and I will be the only one to have access to it except if I share it with somebody else.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Connected Medical Devices from France: Visiomed CEO Olivier Hua
1 2 3