SmartGUIDE - Enabling a New Standard of Care Through a Smart Guidewire Device to Fight Stroke and Save Lives

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Each year, 15 million people suffer from stroke, resulting in 5 million deaths worldwide. This disease is treated via endovascular radio-guided surgery, where the guidewire used to navigate in arteries to reach a lesion is very difficult to orient and steer. At least 5 times per surgery, the surgeon has no choice but to remove the guidewire and reshape the tip by hand, a poorly controlled procedure. This results in increased infection and artery puncture risk for the patient, longer surgery duration (by 30 minutes) and higher costs. A total of 232’000 neuro-endovascular procedures are carried out in the US and EU to prevent and treat haemorrhagic and ischemic strokes. This represents a directly addressable market of €390M for SmartGUIDE. This market is a rapidly expanding sector with an estimated CAGR of 8.6% (2016 – 2021). Artiria Medical is a Swiss Spin-off from the EPFL founded in 2017 with the vision to bring disruptive minimally invasive technologies to physicians in order to decrease Stroke mortality and improve the patient’s quality of life. Our first product SmartGUIDE, is the next generation guidewire which comprises a unique remotely-shapeable tip, developed in collaboration with renowned specialists in the field of interventional neuroradiology. This patented innovation allows the surgeon to deflect in real-time, using a manipulator handle, the device head while navigating through brain arteries, making it easy to use with no training required. SmartGUIDE thus saves 30 minutes per surgery. Saving time translates to a direct improvement of patient recovery. SmartGUIDE replaces on average 2 devices for each procedure, thus reducing the overall surgery cost by €1,200 and is fully compatible with existing endovascular devices. Artiria is expected to generate 35 new jobs, annual revenue of €29.32M and cummulative profit of €18.32 by the 5th year of commercialization with a ROI of 7.4. Breakeven will be achieved by the 3rd year of commercialization.