Meet Dr. Lynne Lim, the physician who based medtech startup NousQ and invented CLiKX, the world’s first handheld robotic system for ear tube surgical procedure.
How has successful the Cartier Ladies’s Initiative Science & Know-how Pioneer Award impacted your analysis and entrepreneurial journey?
It has afforded NousQ immense visibility, validation and an enormous, sensible and great-hearted entrepreneurship ecosystem and sisterhood. It is sort of a tremendous multiplier and accelerator: it opens up so many different worlds that we had not even dared to dream of.
How necessary is it to recognise, help and fund girls entrepreneurs?
With out supporting girls entrepreneurs, the world misses out on improvements and improvement that males don’t deal with or look after. Ladies’s illnesses and particular ache factors will be higher addressed. As they’re normally the principle caregiver for each youngsters and the aged, this additionally means youngsters’s and aged points will be addressed in a extra nuanced means.
What are the challenges of the present surgical procedure technique for glue ear (also referred to as otitis media with effusion)?
When antibiotics and drugs fail and there’s recurrent otitis media with effusion, surgeons insert a small tube of 1–2mm in diameter onto the eardrum to empty the persistent accumulation of fluid within the center ear. The present surgical procedure requires many microscopic devices, which the affected person could not tolerate, and thus require normal anaesthesia. As soon as normal anaesthesia is required, there must be a expensive working room set-up with heavy manpower help, in addition to an costly surgical microscope to visualise the small ear tube nicely within the tiny ear canals. These end in excessive price, lengthy wait instances of as much as years, danger of normal anaesthesia itself, low willingness to get therapy, and inequity resulting from obstacles to accessing therapy.
How does CLiKX handle to omit a lot of what has been commonplace process?
CLiKX simplifies surgical procedure by integrating totally different applied sciences right into a small handheld applicator that makes the incision on the eardrum and inserts the ear tube in simply 1 second, with only a click on of a button. The combination of a proximity indicator, sensor, and software program program permits using only a headlight with magnification, which removes the necessity for a microscope. There may be nice precision and replicability with robotics and automation. Because the process is so fast—quicker than even an injection, Covid swab or tooth extraction—it may be performed underneath native anaesthesia.
What’s the dimensions of CLiKX’s potential influence?
Glue ear is the primary reason for listening to loss in youngsters. Presently, solely about an estimated 18 million ear tube surgical procedures are performed every year globally, however the true want is an estimated 120 million such surgical procedures. By simplifying surgical procedure, CLiKX can considerably enhance the variety of sufferers who can entry the surgical procedure. By treating listening to loss early, sufferers can hear, be taught and communicate. In the long run, they then have extra work and social alternatives, and the entire society advantages.
What have been the challenges you confronted in growing Clikx and constructing NousQ?
An invasive surgical system like CLiKX takes a few years of analysis and improvement. I began engaged on this with my cofounder in 2011. Since then, there have been over 5 main and 20 minor iterations and enhancements of the system. It takes lots of grants and funding to convey CLiKX to the present stage. Once I needed to go away for personal apply in 2014, it turned much more difficult, as there’s a lot much less help for analysis within the personal sector. We soldiered on with help from A*STAR and the Nationwide Analysis Basis. In 2021 we needed to spin off our personal firm in order that we will increase funds and proceed our work. Plus, there are lots of points like manufacturing, scientific trials, rules and cost fashions that we needed to look into. The invasive surgical system ecosystem remains to be comparatively unmatured in comparison with the West, and buyers listed here are extra danger averse. The expertise pool is smaller too. However there have been extra efforts made by Singapore’s medtech trade to help startups.
This story initially appeared within the August 2024 challenge of GRAZIA Singapore and Grazia.Sg
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