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Biotech / Medical : ACMI - Accumed Inc.

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To: Cisco who wrote (1331)1/31/1998 1:04:00 AM
From: Sigmund  Read Replies (1) of 1894
 
Re Cymet it makes me wonder about the patent question. What patents does NeoPath have? There apparently is a patent dispute between NeoPath and Neuromedical. Where does Cymet fit in?

How does this impact ACMI? It has never been clear to me how ACMI and NeoPath differ in their technology in this area. I understand that the process ACMI recommends is to not automatically screen out any slide or any sector of any slide but to provide guidance to the techs on where to look. But the algorithms are possibly the same. The claims are different.

If NeoPath does not really have a lock on the technology through their patents, it seems to me that this is a commodity. I made the point in an earlier post that the technology here is nothing special but simply a new use for machine vision technology in existence for at least fifteen years and probably more.

Quite frankly I think that ACMI is better positioned than NeoPath (except for the patent issue) because the information technology aspects of such an integrated system are more challenging technology wise than the relatively simple task of differentiating one type of cell from another.

This goes to the question of lab economics. I don't think that the task of reading a slide can represent more than $2 assuming labor costs of $25 per hour and processing 100 slides per day per tech (adjust as you see fit). The bulk of the cost is probably associated with preparing the slides to be read, logging them in, reporting the results, quality control, calibrating machines, ordering supplies, storing the slides, maintaining a database of results, billing etc. This probably accounts for the majority of the costs and ACMI is better positioned to address these costs.
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