NIMBLE Diagnostics CTO Susana Amorós: Leader of Innovation

NIMBLE Diagnostics has a strong collection of leaders steering its development and innovation as its technology succeeds expectations. Their CTO, Susana Amorós, sat down to discuss what brought her to the project, the next steps, and the inspiration that brought her to change lives.

Amorós began her studies at UPC studying telecommunications engineering. However, during her last year, she discovered her passion — working in the medical sector of her field. With her degree, she would be able to aid in the design, testing, and manufacturing of medical equipment. Understanding how machines interact with the human body and improve diagnosis, healthcare, and patient well-being inspired her to pursue biomedical engineering. This would later lead her to what would soon become the NIMBLE project, an innovation that will strongly impact cardiac care.

The Start of Nimble Diagnostics

Amorós came across the original study, which would later become NIMBLE Diagnostics, at an early start. They had an idea of approaching stent monitoring using microwaves and had done several proof-of-concept experiments, so they needed to improve the tested capabilities. «I was eager to upgrade their existing devices, aided by the valuable advice of the already working staff, to be able to meet the requirements that would enable the technology to become feasible,» Amorós explains. «Also, my father had recently suffered a heart attack and needed two coronary stents. That is why I found stent monitoring so appealing: it brought together a way to help cardiac patients like my father, and my interest in biomedical engineering.»

Since the start, NIMBLE Diagnostics has made revolutionary development as they move towards human clinical trials in the upcoming year.

NIMBLE’s Impact

As preventative medicine is the future of lowering the burden on healthcare systems, Amorós spoke at length about the importance of the NIMBLE system and how it could improve current preventative care in hospitals and across the world.

«Nowadays, stent malfunction can only be diagnosed symptomatically. The NIMBLE System will be able to arise non-critical stent failure by showing mild pathology outcomes and growing patterns of disease intra-stent,» Amorós explains. «Addressing the problem early will help prevent serious pathologies such as heart tissue scarring or even death. Additionally, when the stent is not actually failing, being able to monitor it and ensure a healthy status will help prevent unnecessary invasive and/or ionizing procedures, and aid physicians in focusing on where the problem really is.«

NIMBLE Diagnostics Today

Altogether, NIMBLE as of now has completed its second animal lab that has proven the validity and success of its system and device. «We have validated our technology, increased its capabilities, and improved its measuring methodology. We have obtained excellent results in terms of stent monitoring and are eager to start the clinical studies that will help optimize the technique and make the most of it,» Amorós explains.

NIMBLE’s technology has already won a multitude of awards, recognitions, and grants that will guarantee its success in the coming years.

Furthermore, in the future, NIMBLE plans on expanding to the EU and the United States. Secondly, they plan on expanding to other medical specialties, too. «We want to apply our technology to stents other than the coronary ones. As well, we want to customize our device so that our technique can be a part of the quality control line of stent manufacturing, to ensure that each and every one of the stents implanted has no defects. We also would like to, in the long-term, expand to any metallic commercially-available implant device to see if the NIMBLE System can aid in the diagnosis of their related pathologies too,» Amorós says.