Startup
Sonoptima: Pioneering the Future of Radiation Oncology with Wearable Technology
In 2022, Dr. William Hall, a Radiation Oncologist and Professor at the Medical College of Wisconsin, was struck by inspiration.
He envisioned a wearable device to assess patients’ readiness for radiation treatment.
He brought the idea to his friend and MCW colleague, Dr. Eric Paulson, a Professor and Chief of Radiation Oncology Physics. Paulson was intrigued, and soon the doctors were working together to create a device they knew would change the lives of patients and the bottom line for providers.
“He and I simultaneously filed an invention disclosure that the Medical College of Wisconsin subsequently submitted a full patent on,” Hall recounted.
The duo was soon joined by Michael Sealander, and together they founded Sonoptima, a company dedicated to bringing their innovative device to the medical marketplace. By February 2024, the company already raised its first round of seed funding. With little more than their world-class credentials and a brief pitch deck, the team managed to raise $700,000 in funding from Gateway Capital Partners and Winnow Fund.
Sonoptima’s device not only promises to improve patient outcomes but also offers significant financial benefits for healthcare providers, heralding a new era in radiation oncology. To gain deeper insights into their progress and the impact of their work, we sat down with Dr. Hall for an in-depth conversation.
MSUN: What does your company do?
Hall: Sonoptima is developing a patent pending wearable imaging technology for patients undergoing cancer treatment with radiation therapy.
MSUN: How does it work?
Hall: Radiation therapy is a very common type of treatment for cancer… and something that is used in about half of all cancer patients. One of the aspects of radiation therapy that has become a standard of care is something called ‘image guidance.’ What that means is that right before we deliver radiation with a large machine, we put the patient on that machine, and we acquire an image of them. Those two machines, the one that delivers the radiation and the one that acquires the image, are one and the same.
What we are trying to do as a company is decouple the imaging guidance aspect of that machine and the treatment delivery aspect of the machine. We are bringing image guidance to the waiting room.
The reason that’s quite beneficial is because there’s a lot of time wasted… our device is addressing this major clinical need for thousands of cancer patients that are treated around the world each day with radiation therapy.
MSUN: It sounds like this wearable device will save time. Will it also save money for healthcare providers?
Hall: Yes. On average, each patient has over an hour and a half of delay throughout the course of their treatment, which is a daily treatment usually given over a five to 28 daily treatments. That is a very, very expensive delay because we have to pay therapy staff, MD staff and nursing staff to all be waiting for this patient’s internal anatomy to be ideal.
Our premise is that we will not need to have that waiting period anymore or we’ll dramatically shorten that waiting period … and it will enable a new type of scheduling paradigm.
MSUN: Has the Medical College of Wisconsin’s Office of Technology Development been helpful as you move this medical innovation toward commercialization?
Hall: They were wildly helpful. Kevin Boggs and Landon Olp are amazing people. They really made this seamless for us.
There is a lot of opportunity to bring innovation and advancement to patients through this sort of mechanism. What I really want to see is MCW becoming more of a biotech hub. We’ve had a few startup companies coming out of MCW, but nothing in comparison to what has come out of places like Stanford or UCSF, where they’re spinning out 200 companies a year.
I want MCW to become the central Midwest leader in biotech transfer. I think the reality is we just have a phenomenal and exciting group of innovators here at MCW, and we can be that. We just need to get more people rallying behind this sort of activity.
MSUN: In the world of MedTech startups, Sonoptima is moving at a lightning-quick pace. How has the team been able to accomplish this feat?
Hall: When people say that we’re moving fast, there’s a couple things that I like to highlight.
Number one, the team is composed of two cofounders who are world-class imaging scientists. I have run numerous clinical trials both locally as Phase I trials all the way through international Phase III clinical trials, so I have the expertise to accelerate a prototype into clinical development through clinical trials very rapidly.
I understand the outside perception. A lot of people have mentioned that this looks like it’s going very fast, and it is, which is exciting, but as a company, we don’t have any inefficiencies or redundancies. We are ultra streamlined and ultra efficient. I want Sonoptima to be the first company to decouple image guidance from the linear accelerator. And I think we are going to hopefully do that.
To learn more about Sonoptima and get updates on the company’s progress, click here.
