Bowel cancer is increasingly occurring at a younger age and in many cases is detected too late. The Groningen startup Ameretat is therefore developing an advanced AI model that can detect polyps on colonoscopy video images at an early stage, where the human eye sometimes falls short. Founder and CEO Setareh Rezaee participated in the NOM Startup Program: "It gave us a framework to validate our product in a very focused and structured way.
During a colonoscopy examination, an average of nearly 28% of polyps present in the colon are overlooked. 'These are often incipient polyps that are difficult to see with the naked eye and can later grow into malignancy,' says Rezaee. 'But at an early stage, they can be treated well and quickly. Our AI model watches the video images in real time and helps the doctor or specialist detect those incipient polyps in time. And with a 10% improvement, you save 55,000 lives a year in Europe alone. We focus on scalable, cloud-based tools that work quickly, are easy to integrate into hospitals and can be flexibly deployed across different healthcare systems.
From research to startup
The idea behind Ameretat began during Rezaee's PhD research, at the oncology department of the UMCG. 'The big challenge of AI models in the medical sector is that they often need a huge amount of training data to work properly. And not every hospital works with the same equipment, of course, so you also have to make sure that it doesn't just work on the most modern devices with the highest image resolution,' Rezaee explains. 'Our model turned out to work very well with very little data, even with different resolutions, from 8K to SD.'
'I actually always wanted to become an entrepreneur,' she continues. 'After all, I like building something and I was never short of ideas. And when we found out that the model worked well and was easy to integrate, I knew this was the idea I really needed to do something with. So in the last year of my PhD, I started setting up Ameretat as a company and participated in the VentureLab program and various pitch contests and startup competitions. In doing so, I also got to know the startup ecosystem in the Northern Netherlands very well.''
Validating and structuring
Ameretat has been around for just over a year now. 'Validating your product is essential, but of course in the medtech world things don't go as fast as you would like,' says Rezaee. 'Medical specialists are incredibly busy, so it already takes a lot of time to schedule an interview, let alone the time it takes to convince them afterwards to try our model and become a partner. I was already in contact with people within NOM, and when I was made aware of the Startup Program, it was actually perfect timing, because that was exactly what I was looking for.'
'The program gave us a framework to validate our product in a very focused and structured way,' says Rezaee. 'And that structure is very valuable, because it allows you to show exactly what steps you have taken. That is also very relevant information for potential investors. And in addition, as an entrepreneur, it gives you confirmation that you not only have a good product or idea, but also something that you can adapt to the needs of your customers. After all, it would be a shame if you put a lot of time and money into your product and find out at the end that nobody wants it.
KVK Innovation Top 100
'The step from research to startup was exciting and a lot of fun, but it certainly wasn't easy,' says Rezaee. 'The most important lesson I learned in that is that it is not a linear process. There are easy days where you feel like you've really accomplished something and are working toward something, but of course there are also difficult days. In the end, it's a matter of persevering and working hard at something you really believe in.
And that hard work certainly paid off for Ameretat, too. Last year the startup finished 12th in the Health and Nutrition category of the KVK Innovation Top 100. 'This was the first year that startups with little or no turnover were also allowed to participate,' says Rezaee. 'And it was great to be nominated and finish in 12th place.'
Future plans
What do the next few years look like for Ameretat? 'Right now we are in talks with Future Tech Ventures about a funding round, and we are also in contact with several hospitals to further test our product and set up pilot studies,' says Rezaee. 'The more hospitals join as partners, the better, because we obviously want our product to be as easy as possible to integrate into different healthcare systems.'
'The Netherlands has very good university hospitals that we can collaborate with,' Rezaee continues. But we are also making the first contacts with hospitals in Germany and Belgium.'In the somewhat longer term, of course, we also want to enter the market with our product. Sometime next year we want to launch a first version of our product and if all goes well, in two or three years we will bring an all-in-one solution to the market.'