Can you introduce our readers to the mission of MedPrime Technologies?

MedPrime Technologies is a medical device company founded in 2014 by four Masters students who recognized the need for medical equipment developed and manufactured in India. We were the first company globally to create a digital microscope that can be used not just for educational purposes but to run tests in a professional lab setting for diagnostics pertaining to patient lives. Our digital microscopes are integrated with mobile phones or tablets for various benefits such as digital viewing, image capturing, sharing, live streaming, projection and analysis. We are also moving towards automation of microscopy to make the process smarter, faster and more efficient.

What are the company’s main product lines?

MedPrime offers three lines of products. Our first offering is our Portable line, which is what we started out with. These are more compact and battery operated. Second, we have our Benchtop line, which is similar to a traditional microscope in structure but, instead of viewing the sample in an analog manner, you see it digitally. Third, we offer our Transform line, which is geared primarily towards pathology students. It is a regular binocular microscope that can be transformed into a digital model at a later stage by adding a digital head. When students are studying or entering exams, they cannot use the digital feature because it comprises a mobile phone or tablet. With the Transform line, they can make the initial investment and let their equipment evolve alongside their professional development.

Are your microscopes regulated as medical devices?

Our products are not regulated as medical devices because they are imaging systems. We are not doing the actual diagnosis – we are just helping users see the sample more clearly.

How do the digital and automation components of your microscopes improve the diagnostics process?

While other fields were becoming digitized, people were still using old-fashioned microscopes and noting their observations by hand. In this way, the sample and the observer (a pathologist) would have to be in the same physical location. In places like India, pathologists can be found in cities but not in small villages. Additionally, there is a globally low pathologist to patient ratio because the number of patients is increasing as is the number of diseases requiring microscopy for diagnosis, yet the number of pathologists is not increasing accordingly. In India, samples from rural areas would have to be sent to a city to be analyzed, and this would result in time delays. There are places where this lag is up to one week even for simple tests like malaria, which must be completed quickly for immediate treatment. With a delay in testing, there is a delay in treatment, and the quality of life goes down. Digitization brings everything online. The need for physically transporting samples is diminished because you can send images over the internet or livestream instead. Now, you can look at a sample on a screen, capture images, record them, make measurements, run analyses, and project visuals. In the context of India, pathologists no longer need to physically go to each lab to sign off on diagnoses. Instead, they can work remotely, making the pathway for treatment faster for patients.

In this way, automation can help make microscopy more efficient. By bringing in machine learning to assist with some diagnoses, such as through counting cells or other relatively simple processes to reduce the workload of a pathologist, we can help bridge the gap between pathologists available and diagnoses that need to be run.