Calla Health Updates
2021 has been filled with many exciting updates for our venture, Calla Health. In this post, we’ll be sharing relevant updates about our technologies, our new collaboration, and our team.
Our Technologies
The Pocket Colposcope has been refined and is nearly ready for purchase. The anticipated launch is Fall 2021. For pre-orders, please complete this brief form.
The newly optimized Pocket Colposcope can easily be inserted through a traditional speculum for cervix imaging. The Pocket enables high quality cervix imaging with white and green illumination, widefield and high-resolution options, to achieve comparable magnification and contrast to that of a high-end digital colposcope.
The Callascope is a tampon-sized version of the Pocket Colposcope. This device is similar in function to the Pocket Colposcope, but has a slimmer stem, and a removable introducer on the camera tip, which provides a comfortable alternative to the traditional speculum. This introducer has a Calla Lily form factor for cervix manipulation and \enablesself-cervix imaging, without the speculum, which can be performed in the comfort of a woman’s home or at a community clinic.
Calla Health’s third technology update has been the development and validation of a Machine Learning Algorithm for colposcopy automated risk evaluation (CARE). The CARE Algorithm is able to rapidly classify digitally captured images of the cervix as normal/benign, pre-cancer or cancer, which is especially useful in settings where expert interpretation is unavailable.
A New Collaboration
We are working with biomedical engineers at the Richards-Kortum Lab at Rice University (specifically, Dr. Rebecca Richards-Kortum, Savid Brenes, Jackson Coole, Dr. Jenny Carns, Yajur Maker, and Dr. Richard Schwarz). Our teams are partnering with healthcare providers in Houston and Brazil at the following hospitals:
- Santa Casa Hospital Porto Alegre BRA
- Barretos Cancer Hospital BRA
- The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center USA
The Rice team has developed a mobile high-resolution microendoscope (mHRME) to be used to optically biopsy high-grade neoplasia, which is present in cervical precancerous and cancerous lesions. They are partnering with the Center for Global Women’s Health Technologies to use the Pocket Colposcope as a low-cost imaging device.We are developing and optimizing algorithms that can create a map of suspicious areas of the cervical images captured with the Pocket Colposcope.These feature map will help guide physicians when they are imaging the cervix with the mHRME. This will be implemented in clinical trials in Brazil late this summer.
Overall, the goal of this collaboration is to find accurate, low-cost, and accessible replacements to traditional colposcopy and biopsy.
Our Team
The Calla Health team has been growing!
We are excited to welcome our first intern, Arlette Geller.
