Sense A/S (Privately Held)

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April 13, 2012 Issue

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With 24 Hours Measuring of Blood Pressure Without any Inconvenience, Sense A/S and its ContiPress™ Product is Offering Hope to the More than 1.5 Billion People Suffering from Hypertension

Company Profile:
www.sense-as.com

Sense A/S is dedicated to the development of novel medical devices for accurate, non-invasive, non-interfering measurement of blood pressure. The new innovative ContiPress^TM system will benefit both healthcare professionals and patients in the daily management of blood pressure measurement and monitoring.

Peter M. Eriksen
Chief Executive Officer
Peter M. Eriksen was appointed CEO of Sense A/S in 2011. Mr. Eriksen has a long international executive career in medical technologies as well as board positions within medical technologies. Prior to joining Sense A/S, Mr. Eriksen was Board Member in Norma A/S.

Between 2008 and 2010, Mr. Eriksen was a Board Member in Unisense Fertilitech A/S and in 2008 he was Chairman of the Board of MTIC in Aarhus. 2007 to 2009, he served as Chief Executive Officer Pnn Medical A/S. From 2006 to 2008, Mr. Eriksen was Chairman of the Board of Dormicor Aps and participate in establishing the Techtransfer unit at Rigshospitalet.

In 2005, Mr. Eriksen was partner and owner of PMEConsult Aps and PMEHolding APS (Focus on MedTech customers as APAX (prostate cancer), Sofinova SA, (obesity), CVRx Inc. (Hypertension), and CoAxia Inc. (Stroke), Coloplast (conf.), Ictal Care (epilepsy).

From 2000 to 02, Mr. Eriksen participated in Medtronic Executive leadership Training and from 1998 to 2004, he was Vice President/General Manager in Medtronic Inc. Minneapolis and Vice President/General Manager in Medtronic Functional Diagnostic A/S (Dantec, Synetics and Zinectics consolidation).

Between 1997 and 1998, Mr. Eriksen was Chief Operational Officer in PPU Maconomy A/S, 1992 to 1996, Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial officer and Group Financial Manager in Brüel & Kjaer A/S and 1978 to 1991 he held various Financial Manager and Accounting positions in Søren T. Lyngsøe, DFDS A/S, DAFOLO A/S etc.

In 1987 Mr. Eriksen graduated from Copenhagen Business School, BA in Management Accounting and in 1983 specialized studies in Management Accounting, Danish Commercial College.

Healthcare
Medical Devices
(Privately Held)

Sense A/S
Vallensbaekvej 18 A
DK-2605 Broendby
Denmark
CVR # DK10092051
Phone: +45-5199-6600
www.sense-as.com
 

Interview conducted by: Lynn Fosse, Senior Editor, CEOCFO Magazine, Published - April 13, 2012

CEOCFO: Mr. Eriksen, what attracted you to Sense?

Mr. Eriksen: I have been working in major med-tech devices companies both in Europe and in US. When I was presented with the non-interfering solution Sense A/S had for patients in need of measurement and monitoring of their blood pressure, I also saw a great opportunity for solving the many problems related to 24 hours continuous blood pressure measurement.
 

I have worked with a US company called CVRx on resistant hypertension, one of the key follow up measurements was 24 hours blood pressure measurement, and we had many problems getting good 24 hours measurements, due to the discomfort of existing technology.
 

For example, many patients wake up during night measurement every time the cuff inflates and that really defeats the purpose of measuring during the night and getting a real 24 hour picture of the patient. If we can prove the efficacy and safety on the device, then we have something unique for the patients suffering from or under surveillance for hypertension - 24 hours measuring of blood pressure without any inconvenience.

CEOCFO: How does the device work?

Mr. Eriksen: The ContiPress^TM consists of a disposable patch placed on the inside of the upper arm of the patient. Not much different from where your physician places the cuff on a conventional blood pressure measuring device today. Embedded in the patch is a set of electrodes similar to ECG/EMG electrodes. Prior to application of the patch, a small reusable electronic unit is mounted in the patch. This electronic unit measures the blood pressure by means of bioimpedance. The electronic unit is after the measuring period of up to 24 hours placed in a reader/docking unit connected to the health care professional’s PC to transfer data to the user interface alongside with erasing data from the unit.

CEOCFO: Is the patient hooked up to the device overnight?

Mr. Eriksen: They are not really hooked up, because all the intelligence is in the patch. What you will get is a patch and is a little electronic device connected to the patch. It is a patch that you place on the upper arm, and you will wear that for twenty four hours. When you are done making the measurements, you will take that electronic device off and throw the patch away. Then you will deliver the electronic device to the physician, where it is then going to read the 24-hour measurements. What has been known for many years, both at the American Heart and other places is that a 24-hour study of the blood pressure is giving a much better result and a view of the patient’s blood pressure. All of us know that when we are going to the physician and taking normal cuff measurements, a big part of that is influenced by the environment. Therefore, when you are at the physician’s office many people have a higher blood pressure than they normally have, because they are nervous about being at the doctor’s office. I think that it was Lancet that had written that it is around 30% who suffer from what they call “White Coat hypertension”.

CEOCFO: Would this be applicable to a single blood pressure reading as opposed to the cuff or would it only be used in the long-term situation?

Mr. Eriksen: Our device can be used for measurement in office, but the focus is long-term measurement.

The United Kingdom has decided that if you are in a doctors office and are measured with high blood pressure, you have to undergo a 24-hour study to be sure that you are giving people the right treatment. The main reason for the long-term measurement is that it has a better clinical value, but also because about 30% of the people diagnosed with High blood pressure in office, suffer from White coat hypertension (effect from your surroundings) and therefor the risk of over medicating people. Furthermore, recent studies have shown that the night readings have a much greater diagnostic value than day readings.

The request for 24 hrs measurements is also included in the NICE guidelines (reimbursement authority for UK).

CEOCFO:  Where are you in the process of development and commercialization?

Mr. Eriksen: We are starting now to make the final prototype and we will start a multi-center trial later this year conducted in the US and Europe. We also have started the regulatory process. We believe that mid/end 2013 we will have an approved product.

CEOCFO: What will you be selling and how will you get this to potential customers?

Mr. Eriksen: We are a small development company, so our strategy is to attract some of the larger players that are in the field of hypertension. The strategy for the company is that we look for an exit in 2013, beginning 2014.

Many Medical device companies already have a stronger sales channel within Hypertension and building it our self will be very expensive.

Our main task now is to secure as good data as possible from our multicenter trial from this non-interfering device. The real difference from conventional blood pressure devices of today is that ours is non-interfering. The non-interfering nature of our device means that nobody can feel that they are being measured and this way measurement will not influence the blood pressure values. You probably have tried to have a cuff around your upper arm and you know that it is really making a strong pressure to get a measurement. That could influence you physiologically, but also psychologically by having this pressure. With ours, it is more like a normal situation and thereby you will get a real reading of your blood pressure. Many people say, “Why haven’t we thought about that”? I fully agree, because it is uncomfortable the way they are doing it today and if we have to give all the people suffering from hypertension the right treatment, then I do believe that we have to have a better diagnostic device. We do hope that our device is going to help many people suffering from Hypertension. The founder Mr. Lars Lading, has founded something really unique.

CEOCFO: Why should investors be paying attention to what Sense A/S is doing today?

Mr. Eriksen: We do believe that people should pay attention to this because hypertension is a fast-growing market place. There are around 1.5 billion people in the world suffering from hypertension. One of the key issues with hypertension is to secure that they get the right treatment. However, to get the right treatment, you also have to be able to have the right diagnosis. Therefore, when someone is coming with the right diagnostic tool and hopefully it will be us, there is a huge potential both seen from a diagnostic point of view, but also seen in the fact that this simple device very easily can do it repeatedly. It can also help determine if the pharmaceutical you are getting from one Pharma Company is the right one for you, or if you should change the pharmaceuticals to help your treatment. They do not have that today because most people would only do a 24-hour study once - and because of the cuff method, people are not willing to do it again, not for 24-hours. Therefore, I do believe that with a market this size and an opportunity to both help in the diagnostic process, as well as help secure that people are getting the right treatment, gives enormous potential market wise. I do believe that is why investors should look at us and see that this has a huge potential.

Everybody talks about a simple diagnostic way you can go home, make all the diagnostics and not be in the hospital. You can do it with ContiPress^TM and get the right readings. That is what investors should look at. Then there are a lot of other opportunities with this kind of technology, but we are very focused on what we can do so far. We also have said that with the same device we can measure vascular stiffness and pulse velocity. However, we are focusing on blood pressure measurement, systolic, diastolic and mean arterial pressure.

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I saw a great opportunity for solving the many problems related to 24 hours continuous blood pressure measurement… The non-interfering nature of our device means that nobody can feel that they are being measured and this way measurement will not influence the blood pressure values. - Peter M. Eriksen