SPACE TELEMEDICINE FOR HUMANS HERE ON EARTH
Jeremy Barbera's start-up Vantage Health, Inc. is pioneering mobile health screening. Soon we will be exhaling into a device attached to our smart phones to learn if we are well. Here is space age technology people on earth really need. The first telemedicine mission is detecting lung cancer earlier.
By Robert J. Flaherty
Jeremy Barbera grew up in the lower east side of Manhattan where his father was an engineer for Bell Labs when it was America's foremost scientific think tank. "As far back as I can remember all I wanted to be was an Astronaut or play baseball for the New York Yankees," he laughs.
Fortunately for mankind his baseball skills left much to be desired. So today this 58-year-old scientist turned space technology entrepreneur's Redwood City, CA-based Vantage Health, Inc. (VNTH-$0.12) is pioneering mobile health screening. You simply exhale into a device attached to our smart phones.
What's in our breath will reveal what is starting to take place within our bodies long before it can be detected in today's other more intrusive, dangerous and expensive methods.
Here is space age telemedicine people on earth can appreciate and easily use.
Once the first mission of mobile heath screening to detect lung cancer is accomplished, Vantage will go after early identification of diabetes, colorectal, breast, prostate and pancreatic cancers. As senior citizens get older and even more forgetful, just breathing into your smart phone will monitor whether you are taking your medications prescribed by your doctor. Many non-medical tests like the presence of narcotics, whether legal or illegal, and homeland security to protect against terrorism could be added.
This is the most important thing Jeremy will ever attempt in his life.
After receiving his Bachelor and Master's degrees in physics from New York University, Jeremy's very first job was Staff Scientist at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in the early eighties. Jeremy enjoyed working on various exciting projects like one where he could not discuss what he was doing or even mention the agency involved. He loved the research environment and the U.S. space agency liked him. NASA even paid his tuition for graduate work at MIT where he received his MBA.
After the 9/11 attack Jeremy developed counterterrorism and homeland security skills. Along with his recreational media and entertainment skills with Broadway and London West End productions, he is currently focused on the fields of nanotechnology, healthcare and renewable energy. More importantly his desire to be a mobile space technology entrepreneur deepened. He became aware of how transferring space telemedicine technology for the use by average people could make a huge difference in their lives.
NASA technology monitors the health and wellbeing of its Astronauts in space. By merging telemedicine, media, digital and nanotechnology knowhow, people on earth can also be helped. VNTH technology is licensed from NASA and detects VOCs (volatile organic compounds) in human breath. It detects factors which reveal incipient disease and general state of health. Vantage is preparing for clinical trials now and naturally wants to pass FDA inspection approval before coming to market.
Vantage is based in Redwood City, CA, a ten minutes' drive from NASA's Ames Research Center in the heart of Silicon Valley. The current company backed into a public vehicle formerly incorporated under the laws of the Republic of Seychelles in the Indian Ocean. Its bright beautiful founder Dr. Lisa Ramakrishnan wanted to provide universal access to quality affordable health care across sub-Sahara Africa with improved medicine, hospitals and clinics. Alas Wall Street preferred to do well rather than good. Few jumped to invest in a risky concept in a troubled area. So the founder took back all the operations and the debt but retained some shares. Today the new Vantage Health has about 150 million shares outstanding. The public float is about 20 million. Neither Vantage Health or its private parent Nanobeak, Inc. has any debt.
Vantage Health, Inc. is too new to make analysis very meaningful. If Vantage succeeds in attracting help from a big pharma, everything will look dramatically different two years from now.
Here is what Jeremy has to offer. Vantage's private parent Nanobeak, Inc. co- developed seven patents with NASA. Vantage Health received a sub-license on January 7, 2014 after NASA and Nanobeak entered into an exclusive 5-year license to commercialize mobile healthcare products derived from NASA patented chemical sensing technology and has an exclusive license for five years for this mobile healthcare use.
The license is renewable providing progress is made. So Jeremy would like to get an app device through clinical trials with the FDA by the end of this year or early next year. He guestimates that his team will need several million to get the job done.
Also prestigious Scripps Translational Science Institute formed a strategic partnership with Vantage for the advancement of Mobile Health Technology. Vantage is developing personalized and point-of-care screening using apps based upon chemical sensing residing within a small device attached to a smart phone.
STCI's Center for Digital Medicine is committed to the development and research of novel mobile health devices to accelerate their uptake into clinical practice. Together with Vantage they will collaborate in the planning and execution of clinical trials to prove the app can identify the particular volatile organic compounds exhaled commonly associated with lung cancer.
In a few years Jeremy hopes individuals will be able to monitor their own health using their own their smart phones. But the FDA has made it clear that the first step should be starting with established health care providers. They know the insurance procedures and have the contacts to jump start the process. Using established healthcare providers should simplify the launch considerably.
Imagine a world where deadly diseases like lung cancer could be screened for at the earliest stage in minutes by exhaling into an inexpensive small Bluetooth enabled device that works with any smart phone. Imagine once a cancer treatment protocol is started, the oncologist can monitor patient progress at any time just by having the patient exhale into that same device.
If identifying lung cancer early works, Jeremy has a stream of other uses he wants to attempt. But all that must stay on hold until Vantage proves itself with this first effort.
For more information please visit: www.vantagehealthinc.com. Investors should contact Christine J. Petraglia, Investor Relations, CSIR Group at 212-386-7082 or email: investors@csirgroup.com.
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