Russian startup Unim (United Medicine) has launched the Unim Histology Internet service, which will make it possible for the public to send analyses remotely to the Dmitri Rogachev Federal Clinical and Research Center for Pediatric Hematology, Oncology, and Immunology in Moscow.
Backed by the IIDF (FRII in Russian, the country’s largest startup investment fund inspired by Vadimir Putin), the project has received personal support from the President, who has requested that the government consider setting up a remote diagnosis system for oncological diseases based on the startup’s technology.
“The patient becomes our potential client at the stage when he receives a diagnosis of neoplasm (and no determination of its malignant or benign nature has been made), or else at the stage when the necessary investigation cannot be done or cannot be done in time at the patient’s medical facility, or when clinical data do not agree with the morphological investigation and repeat investigation is necessary (there are many cases of this). Biopsy material is obtained on location, as a rule, and we have it delivered by air to our laboratory (in Russia, in 1-2 days, on average),” project founder Alexei Remez told CNews.ru. The delivery cost “from door to door” for residents of the European part of Russia will be no more than 500 rubles ($15), and 1,000 rubles ($30) for those living in the Far East, Remez said. “If Unim Histology takes on just 10,000 of the 800,000 morphological investigations performed annually in Russia, it will be a quite large-scale business,” he added. Until recently, Remez held the post of vice president of the Israeli startup Gbooking, an electronic service to search for services and make appointments with the organizations that provide them. Launched in February, Unim Histology raised 1.4 million rubles (approximately $41,000) from FRII last month. Now the company is in negotiations with business angels. Source: CNews.ru
