Need for telemedicine technology goes up 'dramatically' since COVID-19 crisis

Daniel Hawkins, Avail Medsystems CEO, speaks to Yahoo Finance's Alexis Christoforous and Brian Sozzi, about the spike in usage of Avail's telemedcine technology amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Video Transcript

BRIAN SOZZI: Special surgeries are beginning to resume across the country. But the operating room may look a bit different as coronavirus restrictions stay in place. Here to discuss a potential solution is Avail Medsystems CEO Daniel Hawkins. Daniel, good to see you this morning. Really interesting technology that you guys have come up with. Walk us through it. Take us through how does it work and who is using it.

DANIEL HAWKINS: Thanks, Brian. And appreciate the opportunity chat with you this morning. Avail was founded to change the paradigm of how clinical procedures-- how surgeries are supported both by collaborating physicians and by the medical device companies that make the equipment used in the surgery.

Essentially, we've created a new type of telemedicine. There's a large console that sits next to an operating table. It's about the size of a person that might be in the room. There's a screen on that console and a pair of cameras. And in the back, there is a way that you can plug in different types of technologies that are used by surgeons during a procedure to conduct that procedure. You should be thinking of angiograms or echocardiograms, ultrasound, that sort of thing.

Remotely, a collaborating physician or somebody from a medical device company can control all of those cameras. They can control those images. And on the screen that they're looking at-- a touch pad-- they can choose full screen or split screen and have access to everything they would otherwise need if they were in the procedure room to help the surgeon conduct that procedure, to advise them. Medical device companies typically do that in person today. And, in fact, it's done millions and millions and times every year. But there's lots of challenges with doing that, particularly in today's environment.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: It's just incredible video to watch that, you know, these people are able to conduct these surgeries without necessarily being in the room, all of them. I'm curious how much it costs? I'd have to think it's expensive. And then that leads me to who's able to afford it? Is it more private hospitals, private practices that are doing this? Who's using this technology?

DANIEL HAWKINS: So actually, we've created a business model here specifically designed for the challenges of the health care environment. We actually, Alexis, don't charge for the equipment. If we were to charge for it, it would be well over $100,000 per unit if you want to call it one of those, the consoles that we call them that sit in the operating room. We don't charge for that equipment. We don't charge the hospital for it. We don't charge the medical device companies for it.

You should be thinking of this a little bit like a cell phone in the 1980s. We're going to give you the cell phone. We actually just want to charge you for when you use it. So what that allows medical equipment companies to do is be part of procedures in surgery rooms where they only need to be there for 5 minutes or 10 minutes. They do that. Based on the amount of time they're there, we charge them for that time. So that's how we generate our revenues. The important part with that is that we have dropped the restrictions to get the equipment into operating rooms and really with that hit our mission of enabling clinical collaboration across all geographies without that restriction of economics.

I'm the son of a physician. It's very important to me and has been for my entire career in this industry 25 plus years to advance medical technology, to advance techniques. And even prior to COVID, one of the limitations is to do that, you need to physically be in a procedure room or an operating room to guide a surgery or to advance a technique. If we can use technology to eliminate that physical requirement, now we have a chance to massively broaden how techniques are disseminated and used, and clinical education now has no boundaries.

BRIAN SOZZI: Daniel, you recently raised a round of funding. But just given how useful your technology appears to be, I imagine you have VCs blowing up your phone.

DANIEL HAWKINS: Well, candidly, I've been, as I mentioned, 25 years in the medical equipment business. The last company I started is public now. It's called Shockwave Medical. When I was building that one, I had the normal challenges that you might expect with medical device companies and frankly really at most startups where you had to go seek funding.

We'd had the exact opposite happen. People have contacted me through networks directly and frankly offered for us to come and pitch their partnerships and whatnot, which is terrific. I certainly love that. This is a very capital intensive company we're building here.

Having said that, we have a fundamental belief that once this equipment is in operating rooms, because of the problem we're solving-- again, even pre-COVID, this problem existed, and since the onslaught of COVID, it's dramatically more significant now as a solution-- that this bet, if you will, of being a telecommunications platform in the operating room through what we call procedural telemedicine enables something that can't be done today. And it is truly timed for today's environment. So really, we're in this for the long haul to build a new way of supporting surgeries.

BRIAN SOZZI: Well, good luck on the road ahead. Really just some amazing technology there. Avail Medsystems CEO Daniel Hawkins. We'll talk with you soon.

DANIEL HAWKINS: Thanks very much.