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There is a benefit to having healthy shareholder value (in a situation like Titan's) that has nothing to do with the stockholders being able to realize investment value.
Fowler and Hargrove have said repeatedly that they are driven to create a system that adds value to the medical scene, both for the users and the patients. That is admirable, but doesn't out any points in the column for how to succeed as a business venture.
In my opinion, the pps of this company is detrimental to seeding the market by developing anticipation among hospital purchasers, and surgical providers. The pps is that of a "shot in the dark" company. The real progress that Titan has made and the real potential of this company is unknown to the medical marketplace, let alone tech investors. If ISRG or Samsung or anyone else gets the word-of-mouth jump on Titan with an upcoming product (even if in reality, years away) it will set Titan back another year and many potential sales.
In my opinion, at this stage of their game, they need to develop anticipation in their potential market that THEY are the one to watch, to prepare budgets for, and to interest surgeons in training.
A pps of pennies over a dollar for Titan is ridiculous. I'm tired of the moral highground stuff from management. They know they have a winner, but no one else does. You just don't reveal the finished product on one grand day (Segway, for example, hasn't been able to capitalize on their revolution). You need to build a base of potential customers.
Yes, and a Chinese version being used on patients one article below that.
Chinese Micro Hand S robot (formerly called Micro Hand A).
The ultimate success of the SPORT platform will boil down to one thing: is snake arm technology capable (or ultimately better) than joint-articulated technology, for surgery.
Fowler said they are still improving on the control and dexterity. I think this is why the video still shows "clunky" movement.
Any competitors to Titan will be in a different camp than the multi-segment continuum (IREP). What surgeons ultimately train for, accept, and promote will be critical.
He goes on to define that as the controllers being physically separate from the effectors. Simply put, that is what SPORT always has been. He was not speaking about remote telesurgery, but of course that would be a possible development.
Thanks. I'm three minutes in and am hearing what a great investment Titan has been for the shareholders. Am I in bizzaroworld?
Adrian Park, M.D. is listed on Titan's SAB (assuming it is up-to-date). He is the editor-in-chief of Surgical Innovation, a bi-monthly peer-reviewed journal focused on minimally invasive surgeries. He also holds a chair at the SAIL learning center.
I don't have a subscription, but can sometimes get these papers through my workplace. It is a middle-ranked surgical journal but the articles look pretty cutting edge, including robotics. Many articles are animal and cadaver models. Some involved with testing human performance with new surgical tools, imaging, robotics, etc..
I highly suspect that also given his connections to Titan, the earliest peer-review published papers using SPORT may come through this journal. Some may have already since the mechanisms tested/used in the papers are not always mentioned by trade name, but only as a general description. Reviewing the existing issues and those upcoming may give hints as to what Titan is up to as it tests SPORT. Reviewing the author names and institutions may also produce clues.
Please pass this along to Pops when Gilligan's Isle is over.
FDA approved it for rectal cokebottlectomies.
You said, "I like that Ximedica is headlining a robotic conference in December at the same time the SPORT is supposed to be done and delivered for verification and trials."
The representative from Ximedica (Juli Denny) is only 1 of 33 "advisors" to this regional business promotion style conference promoting robotics. I don't see that she is speaking at the conference. Probably manning a booth promoting Ximedica services and giving advice to attendees.
This conference is good, but not big news for Ximedica, and definitely nothing special regarding Titan or SPORT.
Curiously, she did previously work for JnJ. I do not know if she was in the Q-tip and baby-ass powder division like Pops probably was. Maybe she is on tap to replace him at Titan. Sounds like she is better qualified.
Well if 2+ years is "close to being given FDA approval" then I better pay to read that article.
But I think I'll continue to rely on Pops "they sent me here" Hargrove, Platform-Imaging's Chief Medical Officer Doc Fowler, and international man of mystery Rayman Reiza Reiza Rayman to keep me up to date, thank you very much.
Oh, and don't forget Sherry "5th ave" Bertner.
You said, "Another point I'd like to make - Let's remember that a large element of value provided by this site is the collective medical professional experience(s) shared by the members. We want to attract them, and ask for their contributions regarding their surgical and industry experiences that would relate to SPORT and the competition. Try to keep that in mind while whining about no new information."
Knowledgeable members have been weighing in for the last two years I've followed this board. There is nothing more to weigh in on BECAUSE there is no information forthcoming from this company. In fact they appear to either be out of touch or arrogant. As for attracting new members, if more people knew about Titan and SPORT we wouldn't be sitting at $1.
The collective membership groaned when an agreement with Platform-Imaging was announced (rather than "contributing") precisely because the announcement provided no information and in fact pointed to a company that frankly looks a bit bizarre and has Fowler as a partner. Never has another word been said.
Titan is a strange bird, whether or not SPORT suceeds. And Pops is the CEO, Rayman is a mystery man, Ximedica is a black box. They have communicated less after they agreed that they would communicate more. Active investors can't work with that. That's what people are frustrated about.
Yea, I heard that Google is 100% into Platform-Imaging. Just can't decide how many billion to offer them.
Platform-Imaging, what a company, what a team, what a name!!!
What a website!!!! Put together by a grad student in 2004 using Windows 95, and never changed. Fowler looks like Chuck Norris's father starring in a 1970's cowboy movie.
I swear, Titan Medical would be better suited to presenting Canadian processed-cheese products.
Relieved to hear Pops is still alive, but possibly still of sound mind is not confirmed.
Ximedica is costing them big-time, as predicted. But thank goodness for Ximedica because this 'management team' is TOTALLY out of its league.
If any possible grain of solace can be taken away from this pathetically dry release to stockholders holding the bag for 5 years it is that the 'in the near term' they say that 4th quarter milestones are being reached. Except that we are in the 3rd quarter already. So, so what.
Pops is an A*hole, and Fowler and Rayman are wussies.
No news at all.
I wouldn't say garbage. The form factor at the effector end (by the time the camera can take a peek) is 'pretty large', I admit.
However:
1) They show a working console, that doesn't look like a bench prototype.
2) The robot end doesn't look prototype either.
3) There is no control head needed; the articulation motions are acomplished by motors at the limbs. The mounting at the OR table looks quite clean and simple.
4) Plenty of room for electrical and fiber optics leads down to the effectors.
5) This system can be made smaller as technology advances. Probably already working on a smaller system.
4) Looks like a top flight group in terms of credentials, with an active university backing. Compare their management team to our 'team'.
6) Good looking and informative website. Including a media contact (now there's an idea).
These guys are for real.
Pops is still shown on Linkedin as Chairman and CEO of Titan, but that could also be out of date.
Linkedin also shows Paige Hargrove as:
Executive at 3D MedSolutions
March 2014 – Present (1 year 6 months)
However 3D Medsolutions (who made anatomical models, via 3D printing and digital image sets) seems to have gone away. I think they were absorbed by a larger company.
Anyway, her profile is also out of date.
Excerpt:
The round was led by Bluestem Capital, though existing investors such as PrairieGold Venture Partners participated in the financing. The company is a spinout of the University of Nebraska.
Should the feasibility studies go well, the company will look to raise additional funding to go through the regulatory 510K process in the U.S. and the CE Mark process in Europe.
“The technology is really coming quite soon – probably in the next year or two,” Murphy said. “This area of robotically assisted surgical devices is tremendous, and here to stay.”
Hey pops, shuffle on over to Ximedica and see what's going on, will ya? Send me a telegram if you see anything interesting.
Agreed. This board is like a cottage industry of article research, patent review, career-path snooping, financial theorizing, technical and medical design banter, etc., etc., and on and on.
This is a freakin' public company for god sakes! I'm not here to speculate about your god-damned company and everyone else's - just keep me up-to-date! Do you have the goods?
Give us some information, pops! Are you still able to walk? You too Rayman and Fowler - what the hell you think this is, top secret stuff to win the Cold War? You started a COMPANY, not a research project down the hall with some pimply undergrads; deal with it! There is competition far along from just brewing out there. Get this company on the f'ing radar, nitwits! Get the f'ing pps up and investors interested! Get off the Canadian ryebread exchange. GD management clown show.
If you are going to fizzle out, just get us past $2 and let us know it is time to sell.
Nice find.
Is this volume and coverage of methods even possible to have submitted as patent applications in such a short time? I guess if you are Ethicon Endo-Surgery, it is.
It's like a patent application production line. But IMO there is no reason to think this has anything to do with Titan after a quick read through the abstracts shown in the link.
I just don't see the JnJ/Google/Ethicon + Titan thing happening.
What would be the reason to not make it public knowledge and kick things into high gear for such a consortium?
Anyone see anything that makes it look like these applications are for effectors that would mate with SPORT?
Well you are wrong but I wish you were right.
I heard that Pops met with google and he though google glass was a google glass that he could drink his Ensure from. Needless to say they weren't impressed enough to even look at the chicken video that Paige reminded him was in his plaid suitcase under his union suit.
I can't buy it. First of all, how and why do you keep it a secret?
Heck, Titan bottomed out the other day and still trades for crap, and you've got JnJ/google/ethicon talking about going gung-ho into robotics. Somebody somewhere would have had this sniffed out by now.
Instead Titan is partnering with powerhouses like Platform Imaging, a three-man company with a website showing a photo of Fowler from about 10 years ago. Pops Hargrove hasn't made an appearance of any note as a CEO leading Titan in what, never? They have a mystery effector partner.
This outfit may be doing the building right with Ximedica, and the training right with Sail, but we've got Hargrove's daughter doing market development (in Europe - must be nice), Rayman who is never heard from (supposedly the brains of the show), Fowler, who might as well be CEO, and Berbler the missing Manhattanite. I can't believe these people are capable of doing a big time partnership and keeping it quiet.
I have to just hope the slow and steady course still wins out in the end, before we get beaten to the punch.
Yes, this is where Titan/Sport really have an opportunity to forge their own path with high-quality and rigorous training
Snake arms are not going to have the same elements of control that wristed joints do. They don't move the same way. Hence, training will be paramount and will not probably be transferible directly from one platform (eg. daVinci) to another (eg. SPORT), or Mazor, or Surgibot for that matter.
If FDA insists on "similarity" of manual control elements, for example, what fingers and motion control a scissors, then that enormously limits development for all platforms.
No, $1.87.
Still don't expect a loss; but I have no confidence yet that Titan has a "management team" that I can assume knows more than I and many of the posters on this board do.
Heard anything from pops Hargrove lately? He is the CEO isn't he?
IMO, more bottoms until the public profile of this company to aggressive investors is established. Talks by Fowler at the FDA have nothing to do with that.
Who is at the helm? Hargrove? Fowler? Rayman? Bertner? Ximedica?
No info; no confidence; no substantial pps increase. Crap exchange. Out of date info on website.
I am sure there are visionaries that would work for Titan for free (to start). Egotistic surgeon psychology will keep them away. Hargrove will discourage that also due to self-protection. He knows he lucked out, and would be kicked out.
We are on dangerous ground with this "management" structure.
TRXC is not a robot. End of story.
It is a stabilizing tool with integrated imaging.
It will not even be in competition with "robotic" systems. And until the first "autonomous" action built into daVinci, SPORT, Ethicon, ..., none of those are truly robotic anyway.
Google will take the lead in that revolution, I assure you.
Well then maybe Fowler should take the spotlight instead of Hargrove (being sarcastic). Either way, neither will make it as the face of a robotic tech startup. Too old.
Without even mentioning the money they can raise based on the high profile of both companies, and the agreement.
Contrast that with Titan, the "unknown" company, due to their piddling PR and IR.
Well I appreciate your sarcasm. As far as I'm concerned old and incorrect information like that borders on criminal misrepresentation to investors.
Fix it, Titan.
Is that a new addition under the Partners tab?
Knowing their website, that could be a few years old info, pre-SPORT. Not kidding.
In absolute agreement with you, Duke. Didn't Titan estimate they had enough money to get to completion? Turns out most members on this board didn't buy that. Some by crunching the numbers (HC) and others, like me, by commonsense that you don't plan on finishing the race dead broke in tech start-ups. Seems like Titan are the ones that got it wrong. Or lied to their shareholders.
Pure pump and dump posts are a waste of time, but easy to see right through. One of the best unintended by-products of boards like this is to see all the personalities, the attitudes, and the opinions. You read them all; you weigh them all through a lens of your experience and world view. My opinion is still that Titan comes off as only being a loosely-knit management team, with an incompetent CEO, no hard technologists, and an arrogant in-your-face secrecy.
They are sitting on a goldmine and we all know it, but are easily capable of letting it fizzle away. They appear to be running a country store up in Canada. By now, they should renting office space and apartments across the street from Ximedica.
Agree with you in that from a Fowler-type's probable point-of-view, as a surgeon-scientist, time is never the pressing issue. Robotic surgery is his career interest, not a ticket to a fortune. And absolutely true for the other SAB people. They've got very busy careers. Titan is a cool sideline. I've seen what should have been 3-month research projects stretch to 3 years in academic medical institutions. The only time people start picking up the pace is a week before the funding stops. They are not buinessmen. So, they picked up Hargrove. Well first of all looks like his JnJ connections might be a fixxle if he fails to pick up the JnJ/Google backing which could have been dynamite.
As for Hargrove, how dynamic is someone who is post retirement, 70+ years old. Can you imagine a Steve Jobs (or a Steve Case) showing up at a trade conference and saying Apple (or AOL) told him he had to be there; with nothing to show. Hargrove's the CEO for god's sake.
Believe me, Hargrove is at the end of his work-lfe timeline; he couldn't give a crap about Titan 5-10 years down the road, except for nepotism, which he's already indulged in.
What's been missing all along with this crew is dynamism, tech saavy. They've got some big competition ahead; they've got to raise the energy level.
PPS never moved up though when JnJ/Google seemed a possibility since their announcement.
Upward-going speculation never touches this ass-clown managed company, so that only leaves the conclusion that someone out there knows something at least negative in the short term.
Yea, you would think we are a year away from introducing a new flavor for vitamin water. Well that's what being on this Canadian exchange gets you, plus an off-the-radar company "led" by a guy that un-retired as a marketer to CEO a few bright surgeons who contract a real company (Ximedica) with actual technical people to do the real work. Do Fowler, and Rayman spend time on-site at Ximedica? Is Rayman a practicing surgeon? (I couldn't find any info about what he does in London, Ontario) Do the SAB ever meet and review the prototype systems? Is JH in a nursing home? All questions I'd like to know the answers to. Oh, and what is Platform-Imaging up to? (SPORT is switching to the screen and 3-D glasses model, I seem to remember, like Surgibot that we riducule). So note that the pictures of SPORT on the Titan Website are not accurate anymore.
Paige? Bertner?
Hope I have to eat my words. I still believe there is a big market for SPORT assuming the surgeons like it and the FDA passes it.
Cuin, I hate to tell you this but my experience with IP departments at universities and medical centers, even big name ones, is a crapshoot. Some of these departments are essentially inept at trying to market their own institution's IP. Collecting on it, you would think, would be the metric they rate themselves by. Often not the case.
Mostly they are shops that keep the Patent Lawyers busy. Once they sell the IP, percentage returns are just future hopes. Vanderbilt and Columbia have plenty of cash and can wait forever. Academic and medical institutions don't have capitalistic business mentality. It's tenure and promotions and donations. Time is irrelevant. I don't think there is any pressure being put on Titan to produce quickly.
That Ximedica job add may not have anything to do with the SPORT project.
Simplest possibility is usually the best given all the strangeness with this company. They are a naive crew for a startup, for all their brains. The doctor gang continue to just push their weight as doctors; boy 'o boy let's sit on a podium at the FDA. Pops "Marketman" Hargrove is in his pajamas playing with his grandkids and watching NASCAR; his daughter is set, what does he care? Berman, Bertlebug, Bueller, whatever her name is, is in NYC on 5th ave. shopping for Fall with a sweet monthly check. Is Rayman actually real person? Ximedica is about the only tangible in all this. Heard anything about them lately?
Something happened today and enough people are surmising that it is not good, so they sell off.
Maybe the scavenger system in the anesthesia cart ain't workin'.
What, he'll be upset?
Not one of these questions is anything that a stockholder doesn't have the right to ask.
Ask him if Hargrove actually does anything. Or Paige, or Bertner, or Rayman. Ask him about the 1 or 2 people who appear to produce most of the IP; who do they work for.
Ask him why the stockholders never hear anything. Ask him why the effector company's name isn't provided. Ask him what he thinks of JnJ/Google, Cambridge, any rumors of developments at ISRG. Ask him why he thinks the pps is so low, why shouldn't Titan be trying to raise more money............