What if the millions of hours of video captured during medical procedures weren't thrown away? A revolution in AI in endoscopy is underway, turning this once-wasted data into a powerful tool to predict disease and accelerate cures. In this episode, we talk to Matt Schwartz, CEO and co-founder of Virgo Surgical Video Solutions, a company at the forefront of this transformation.
Every year, over 20 million GI endoscopies are performed in the U.S., generating a massive amount of high-definition video that, until now, was simply deleted. We dive deep with Matt on how Virgo developed a seamless system for endoscopy video capture, using a small hardware device and a HIPAA-compliant cloud platform to automatically record, de-identify, and store this valuable data without changing the clinical workflow. This enormous dataset, comprising billions of video frames, is the fuel for Virgo’s groundbreaking endoscopy foundation model, EndoDINO. Matt explains how this model, pre-trained on an unprecedented scale of real-world video, can achieve state-of-the-art results in tasks like identifying anatomical landmarks and scoring ulcerative colitis severity. The most exciting application? Using AI for clinical trial endpoints. Matt reveals how EndoDINO was able to predict with remarkable accuracy (an AUROC of 0.78) whether a patient with ulcerative colitis would respond to a placebo, a breakthrough that could revolutionize how pharmaceutical companies design and run clinical trials, making them faster and more efficient. We also discuss the future of this technology, including the potential to analyze the GI tract to find early signs of cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases.
About Our Guest:
Matt Schwartz is the CEO and Co-founder of Virgo Surgical Video Solutions. A biomedical engineer who previously worked as a product manager at Intuitive Surgical on the DaVinci robotic surgery platform, Matt was inspired to found Virgo after realizing the immense, untapped potential of endoscopy video data. He saw an opportunity to build the infrastructure to capture this "treasure trove" of data and use it to power a new generation of AI that could fundamentally improve patient outcomes and even eliminate the need for certain surgeries altogether.
Timestamps:
(00:00) Intro: The Problem with Wasted Endoscopy Data
(01:12) Introducing Virgo: Tapping into Underutilized Video Feeds
(06:02) What is an Endoscopy Foundation Model?
(13:12) The Spark for Virgo: A Challenging Case at the Mayo Clinic
(16:09) How the Virgo Cloud Platform Automates Endoscopy Video Capture
(23:51) Building EndoDINO: Virgo’s Foundation Model for GI Endoscopy
(30:51) Applying AI to Clinical Trial Endpoints in Ulcerative Colitis
(36:23) How AI Can Revolutionize Pharmaceutical Trials
(39:11) Why Virgo Embraced a Hardware Component
(41:41) The Future: Predicting Systemic Disease from the GI Tract
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