The Endiatx PillBot [Photo by Hardy Wilson for MDO]
Endiatx
You may know Endiatx better than some of the rest of the medical device startups on this list, because Endiatx is the only startup Medical Design & Outsourcing has featured on one of our covers this year.
Endiatx co-founder and CEO Torrey Smith and his swallowable, stomach-swimming robots have been courting GIs and investors as they develop their PillBot prototypes toward a minimally viable product.
PillBot is smaller than ever and moving toward IRB trials as soon as this fall. One of the biggest breakthroughs is a new propulsion configuration with smaller batteries and three propellers instead of four.
“We have nailed neutral buoyancy in a swallowable form factor, with room to go even smaller in both diameter and length,” Smith said in July.
He followed up in August: “The robots are small enough and getting even smaller. It’s time for onboard image compression.”
Their goal is to upend the upper endoscopy market with a cheap, disposable device that a gastroenterologist can pilot wirelessly and effortlessly inside a stomach to look for trouble. Future iterations such as the Pill Surgeon would have additional capabilities such as tissue marking, cutting and cauterizing.
“My goal is to make it at least 10 times easier to just let a doctor have a look around inside you. A cheap, mass-market screening tool is what we think is the beginning for this adventure,” Smith told MDO. “Then we start putting on the robot arms and the little snippers and tools and needles.”
