Meet Sameer Kothari, CEO at Medical Diagnostics Innovator: Zilico

Zilico is the result of the desire to improve cancer diagnosis in partnership with some great scientific minds at Sheffield University.

Zilico was set up following a successful collaboration between the University of Sheffield and Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, UK, to develop a more accurate means of diagnosis for cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN). The technology that we created is called ZedScan™ and it is a unique adjunct diagnostic device which uses EIS (Electrical Impedance Spectroscopy) technology to identify cell changes that cannot always be seen with standard colposcopy.
 
 
Zilico Ltd - Zilico Ltd
 

What do you think makes this company unique?

 
The company and the technology is completely unique and born from a desire to create a device that saves people’s lives. EIS (Electrical Impedance Spectroscopy) has fantastic potential for many other uses for other diagnostics and we believe it could be crucial as the basis for more development so watch this space!
 

 

How has the company evolved over the last couple of years?

 
We have had a phenomenal period of growth that sees us now being used in many NHS Trusts in the UK and around the world. We just address the World Health Organisation (WHO) to discuss how the technology may help third world countries where screening programmes are not yet as advanced as the UK. Most excitingly we just received our most robust research.

Scientists looked at the examinations of 5257 women by 82 colposcopists in 26 clinics in 9 different countries. The biggest increase was in women referred with low grade changes, often the most challenging to visualise, where ZedScan had over a 50% increase in high grade disease detection. Overall it showed that Zedscan increases cervical cancer detection by 24% overall. We are delighted with this especially in the diagnosis of hard to spot cases. We are genuinely making a difference.
 

What can we hope to see from Zilico in the future?

 
We have extremely exciting plans in place for further growth, and the development of new products and enhancements to ZedScan. We really hope that we’ll be able to access people around the world who need our help. Watch out for more products that feature EIS because it is a fascinating piece of technology with great potential.