Nordic Life Science 1
founded in Lund, Sweden, in 2016 and is developin
g NEOLA, a lung analyzer for continuous monitoring of the lungs of preterm-born infants using a technology that measures lung volume and oxygen concentration. NEOLA will be sold to the neonatal intensive care units of hospitals as a standalone device, placed next to the ventilator, or as a module incorporated into the overall surveillance system in neonatal intensive care units. GPX Medical was listed on Nasdaq First North Growth Market on October 2nd 2020, and its CEO, Hanna Sjöström, rang the bell; a historic first-timeever bell ring in Lund. Nordic Life Science asked Hanna about the prospects of the company and her strategy moving forward. Congratulations on the listing! Describe your business strategy and your future plans for the company? “Thank you! It feels terrific to take this important step forward in our journey to revolutionize the care of preterm-born infants. Product development is in progress and consists of technical design and verification, clinical validation, CE-approval and establishment of a quality control system, among others. NEOLA has gained interest at the distributor level, and in parallel to our preparations for sale to hospitals via distributors, we have also begun work on plans for licensing our technology to global medtech actors. There is also potential for multiple medical applications of our technology, in addition to monitoring the lungs of pretermborn infants, such as diagnosis of sinusitis, a common and painful disease usually caused by viral infections that also contributes to a high rate of over-prescription of antibiotics, and lung monitoring for older children, and in the future perhaps also adults.” Describe the clinical need for your system? “Every day, one in ten infants are born preterm and many depend on neonatal intensive care for their survival. Preterm birth is also the most common cause 64 NORDICLIFESCIENCE.ORG of death for infants under the age of five. Many of these infants are born with underdeveloped lungs that can advance to life-threatening conditions during their stay in the hospital and risk disabilities later in life. Health care professionals also need the support of modern technology to make life-changing decisions that can improve the health of these fragile patients. Today’s monitoring methods present only snapshots of what is going on and increase the infant’s risk of developing illness later in life. Neonatal intensive care needs new, safe and riskfree methods that can constantly monitor infants born preterm in a way that doesn’t harm them. All in all, our innovation NEOLA can upgrade today’s neonatal intensive care to include continuous lung monitoring and real-time alerts of life-threatening complications.” What opportunities do you have on the market for neonatal intensive care? “The market potential for NEOLA is 586 million EUR per year. We have already identified over 4,000 neonatal clinics, primarily in Europe and the United States, that are advanced enough to be interested in NEOLA. This focus market consists of approximately 60,000 beds in total. Our most important market is the United States. Neonatal care is associated with widespread healthcare costs and we estimate that nearly 80 percent of NEOLA’s sales will be in the US. Other important markets are European countries such as Germany, France and the United Kingdom. Several factors suggest that GPX Medical with NEOLA has the potential to be a game-changer in the pediatrics landscape: preterm births are becoming more common because mothers are older when they first have children, have health issues such as diabetes and high blood pressure, or undergo fertility treatments that result in twins and triplets. C-sections are also becoming more common. We have also seen a positive investment climate within the medical technology sector.”