From devices providing rapid cancer detection to innovations making endoscopy safer, the five companies selected for the 2023 AGA Shark Tank show a glimpse of the future of GI patient care. The AGA Shark Tank will take place March 10 during our annual AGA Tech Summit. It’s your last chance to register and join in person to see who comes out victorious.
Check out the company pitches in the videos below, and scroll to the bottom to take our poll to vote on the most innovative tech.
REN, an advanced robotic colonoscopy system, uses “intelligent magnetic manipulation” to guide an endoscope through the colon with precision and stability. The system’s navigation prevents looping and significantly reduces pain for the patient while its advanced ergonomics reduces the mental and physical burden placed on the operator.
PillBot is a miniature robotic capsule endoscopy developed by Endiatx. Shipped to a patient’s home or picked up from a pharmacy, the standard size capsule is swallowed and then controlled by an external joystick-like device or a phone app by a physician in a physically separate location. Using real-time video transmissions visible to both operator and patient, the capsule navigates the entire stomach in a few minutes without anesthesia and ultimately is excreted outside the body without the need for re-capture.
The Button Huggie is a first-of-kind gastrostomy and cecostomy button securement device that simplifies daily gauze replacement, reduces tract complications, prevents accidental dislodgement, and lowers the cost of care for surgical gastrostomy patients. Ezalife’s device reduces the risk of leakage, infection, and dislodgement of g-buttons after surgery.
Precision™ will be the first and only motorized, automated, rotational cutting and coring endoscopic ultrasound (EUS) biopsy product. Today’s EUS biopsy products are inefficient manual needles requiring multiple repeated passes in and out of the endoscope to obtain the tissue in fragments. Limaca Medical’s Precision offers a motorized single use product that rotates the coring needle at high speed to produce a faster, more efficient, and more consistent endoscopic biopsy yield than current technologies.
nsCanary™ provides real time ex-vivo detection of cancer and precancerous conditions within seconds and without the need of large capital equipment or expensive disposables. There are no images to interpret and can be learned to use in minutes. NovaScan’s nsCanary™ should dramatically reduce missed diagnoses and repeat procedures in pancreatic and biliary procedures while improving patient outcomes and reducing cost of care.
