AGA News – May 2023

And the winner of this year’s Shark Tank is …

The 13th annual AGA Tech Summit took place in San Francisco, Calif., recently, bringing together GI entrepreneurs, clinicians, medical technology companies, venture capitalists, and regulatory agencies working to improve patient care in the field. A highlight of the event is the annual Shark Tank competition, where forward-thinking companies showcase and pitch their innovations to a panel of expert judges.

Congratulations to this year’s winner – Endiatx!
From devices providing rapid cancer detection to technology that makes endoscopy safer, the five companies selected for the 2023 AGA Shark Tank represented a glimpse of the future of GI patient care.

While each team offered a creative solution to modern-day GI challenges, only one could be declared the winner. Congratulations to our 2023 winner, Endiatx! Endiatx will represent AGA in the upcoming Shark Tank competition at DDW^®.

Endiatx has developed a vitamin-sized intrabody robot
PillBot is a miniature robotic capsule endoscopy. Shipped to a patient’s home or picked up from a pharmacy, the standard size capsule is swallowed and then controlled by an external joystick-like device or a phone app by a physician in a physically separate location. Using real-time video transmissions visible to both operator and patient, the capsule navigates the entire stomach in a few minutes without anesthesia and ultimately is excreted outside the body without the need for recapture.

Future GI physician innovators

This year the AGA Center for GI Innovation and Technology (CGIT) welcomed 22 first-year to advanced endoscopy fellows to the AGA Innovation Fellows Program. The program provides a unique opportunity for the fellows to learn from GI clinicians, innovators, entrepreneurs, and medical technology executives on how new technologies are developed and brought to market.

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2023 AGA Tech Summit Fellows Program participants

The fellows received an exclusive behind-the-scenes tour of Medtronic’s R&D facility in Santa Clara, Calif., and got to experience hands-on demonstrations of GI Genius^TM, PillCam^TM, Endoflip^TM, Nexpowder^TM, Bravo^TM, Barrx^TM and ProdiGI^TM technologies. The group was also hosted by Boston Scientific Corporation, Castle Biosciences and PENTAX Medical at a dinner that included an innovators panel discussion. The program will continue throughout the year with monthly educational sessions moderated by members of the AGA CGIT committee.

• Mohd Amer Alsamman, MD, Georgetown University
• Mohammad Arfeen, MD, Franciscan Health Olympia Fields
• Alexis Bayudan, MD, University of California, San Francisco
• Aileen Bui, MD, University of Southern California
• Divya Chalikonda, MD, Thomas Jefferson University Hospital
• Alec Faggen, MD, University of California, San Francisco
• Sweta Ghosh, PhD, University of Louisville School of Medicine
• Hemant Goyal, MD, University of Texas Houston
• Averill Guo, MD, Brown University
• Omar Jamil, MD, University of Chicago
• Christina Kratschmer, MD, Washington University in St. Louis
• Thi Khuc, MD, University of Maryland School of Medicine
• Anand Kumar, MD, Northwell Health – Lenox Hill Hospital
• Xing Li, MD, Massachusetts General Hospital
• Alana Persaud, MD, SUNY Downstate Medical Center
• Itegbemie Obaitan, MD, Indiana University School of Medicine
• Chethan Ramprasad, MD, University of Pennsylvania
• Abhishek Satishchandran, MD, University of Michigan
• Kevin Shah, MD, Emory University School of Medicine
• Shifa Umar, MD, University of Chicago
• Kornpong Vantanasiri, MD, Mayo Clinic Rochester
• Shaleen Vasavada, MD, Baylor College of Medicine