general anesthesia and can take 60 minutes or longer can be done using Smart Medical’s technology with local anesthetics in 15 to 20 minutes, according to Smart Medical CEO Gadi Terliuc.
“We see it as a much-easier procedure for physicians,” Terliuc said yesterday from Israel during an international conference call that included Halak in New York and Domain Elite CEO Micah Zimmerman in Beijing. “The physician training is easier, and the procedure itself is much less expensive.”
Cancer is the most common cause of death in China, and colorectal cancer has become the second most-frequent type of cancer, Zimmerman said. Early screening and detection can make a big difference in the survival rates of patients diagnosed with colorectal cancer.
Endoscopies and colonoscopies are fairly common in the United States (about 15 million colonoscopies are done in the U.S. annually), but Zimmerman said such procedures are still relatively new in China. He said the Chinese market for such procedures is growing by 30 percent to 40 percent a year, and predicts that growth will continue in China for years to come.
Smart Medical’s technology is currently marketed in Europe, and two of the company’s three products have been cleared for use in the United States. CEO Terliuc said the Domain Elite investment also would help the company advance its related technologies in the United States and other global markets.
Author: Bruce V. Bigelow
In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here.
Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.
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