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Sanovas, Inc.: A Savant in Pulmonary Procedures

CIO VendorLarry Gerrans, President & CEO

The World Health Organization report, entitled “World Health Statistics 2011,” estimated that in 2008 over 154 million disability-adjusted life-years (DALY) were lost to respiratory diseases worldwide, with lung cancer alone attributing to thirteen million lives lost. “The science of interventional pulmonology is at its incipient stage. There remain limited options for diagnostic and treatment solutions for lung diseases,” points out Larry Gerrans, President, CEO and Founder of Sanovas, a company making the effort to meet the unmet needs for pulmonologists and Lung patients. Originally conceived to facilitate targeted drug delivery directly to solitary pulmonary nodules, Gerrans soon discovered the elephant in the room: “There were no effective tools to even get to the periphery of the lung. In fact, the tools that did exist were borrowed from other surgical specialties,” says Gerrans.

Gerrans’s inspiration to create the next generation of minimally invasive tools and technologies that could diagnose, treat and cure lung cancer was born. Sanovas has since re-invented surgical imaging, catheter science, physiologic measurement systems, diagnostic and treatment solutions that address the unmet needs for lung treatment. The company has built an enormous portfolio of patents and products and is delivering on its mission to provide Doctors a ubiquitous set of integrated tools that can diagnose and treat the lungs. Conjointly, the Sanovas team, consisting of medical device veterans, has contributed substantially to the science of surgery with a whole slew of innovations that have raised the bar for medical intervention today.

Making seismic changes in the field of advanced bronchoscopic imaging and minimally invasive surgery in general, is Sanovas’ surgical camera, dubbed MicroCam.

Sanovas has designed the technology in such a way that it addresses the spatial, maintenance and cost concerns that have long impacted the delivery and cost of patient care


“In the current surgical setting, where medical equipment has an average commercial life of two years, due to wear and tear and the resulting cost impacts of maintenance and repair, MicroCam is a more affordable option,” explains Gerrans. “MicroCam endoscopic visualization systems eliminate 90 percent of the equipment required to generate an image, they reduce acquisition costs by as much as 80 percent and they virtually eliminate the operational cost burdens hospitals spend on equipment maintenance and repair.”

The ‘Plug-N-Play’ capability and portability of the MicroCam is one of the key features that accounts for its attractiveness. The equipment occupies remarkably lesser floor-space, by removing huge endoscopy towers from operating theaters. “Sanovas has designed the technology in such a way that it addresses the spatial, maintenance and cost concerns that have long impacted the delivery and cost of patient care,” adds Gerrans. The value underlying MicroCam includes its innovative optics, sensors, illumination, hardware, software, materials science and user interface that simplifies navigation towards the anatomy of the lung.

“In a nutshell, MicroCam is a plug-and-play camera with USB and HDMI adapters that can be connected to any display devices or even smartphones, making it easy to use,” evinces Gerrans. This bodes well for emerging countries, remote and rural care settings where diagnosticians are forced to make the most out of minimal resources. “We often encounter doctors who treat patients and perform wellness checks on patients in rural populations,” illustrates Gerrans. “They simply cannot perform diagnostic or therapeutic interventions because of the size and cost of current technology, but with MicroCam a doctor can plug it in and go.”