Opyl snares ex-Cochlear executive as medtech’s platforms approach launch

Special Report: Clinical trial recruitment and design solution company Opyl is picking up momentum with the appointment of former Cochlear executive Mark Ziirsen as a non-executive director.

Former Cochlear (ASX:COH), Aristocrat Leisure (ASX:ALL) and Coca-Cola Amatil (ASX:CCL) executive Mark Ziirsen says he’s “very excited and thrilled” to be joining Opyl (ASX:OPL).

Ziirsen spoke to Stockhead last week, just two weeks after coming on as Opyl’s newest non-executive director, bringing to the role a strong record of delivering growth and improvement across multiple sectors.

“The company’s at a very exciting stage, with the way it’s managed to turn itself around and focus on digital health,” he said. “Digital health is a strong thematic.”

AI will predict outcomes of clinical trials

Despite that narrowing of focus, Opyl has a lot going on.

Last month Opyl announced that its clinical trial prediction tool, which uses machine learning, a field of artificial intelligence, to assess the likelihood of clinical trial success, had completed a major proof-of-concept study by predicting the probability of success ranking 475 current vaccines and therapies in clinical development targeting COVID-19, from most likely to succeed to market to least likely.

While 18 months to two years away from being ready for market launch as an independent scalable enterprise platform, Opyl says it is capable of generating revenue now via consulting projects for individual clients such as pharmaceutical companies, venture investors and governments.

Patient recruitment tool ready to launch soon

Work also continues on Opyl’s clinical trial recruitment platform which should be ready to generate revenue within six to nine months. The web-based platform invites patients to self-select for clinical trials, capture data on interested patients, using artificial intelligence to link them with relevant trials in their geographic area.

Opyl is a specialist social media recruitment solution provider that is generating revenue from consulting services already in place, optimises social networking platforms to recruit patients into clinical trials, fixing a common critical failure point for life sciences companies. As many as 86 per cent of trials fail to meet recruitment targets within their specified time period, a costly major market failure.

Opyl’s digital recruitment platform once fully operational in the coming months will complement the bespoke consulting recruitment services already on offer, providing a scalable, part automated value-add approach.

Clinical trials are getting bigger and more complex, creating a market opportunity for companies like Opyl to assist biotechs and pharmaceutical giants with their work, Ziirsen said.

“We’ve got the platforms into position, they’re not just proof of concepts anymore,” he said.

“We’ve got to build on that, execute in the next six to 12 months.”

This article was developed in collaboration with Opyl, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.