Turing Medical landed $1,137,469 from the National Institute of Mental Health for commercialization of its MRI imaging software. That’s the fourth Phase II grant in four years, following the award of four Phase I’s. All in – it’s picked up $17,291,555 in funding from the NIH.
There are 12,000 magnetic resonance imaging machines in the U.S. and the company says that a patient moving around while data is collected results in about a 20 percent failure rate — racking up more than $400,000 per machine per year or an extra $4 billion in avoidable healthcare costs.
The company launched its second product in June at the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine’s annual conference in Toronto. ‘FIRMM-pix’ is a novel in-bore visual biofeedback module to actively reduce head motion during brain MRI. A complement to Turing’s existing FIRMM software, FIRMM-pix may further improve image acquisition efficiency and data quality.
“Our software solution Framewise Integrated Real-Time MRI Monitoring (FIRMM) received FDA 510(k) clearance on August 26, 2020 and is currently being used in (greater than) 75 research institutions,” the researchers said in their project description. “However, to ensure the commercial success of FIRMM, we need to expand the customer base to clinical institutions.”
Turing Medical (formerly NOUS Imaging) was founded in March, 2019 and is headquartered in the Central West End of St. Louis, Mo.
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