Reflecting on the groundbreaking achievements of 2023 necessitates a brief look back at the pivotal successes of 2022. The year began with Canada’s first nationwide haptic ultrasound scan, a mere 15 months after Wosler’s technology was conceived. This innovation enabled high-quality diagnostic ultrasounds to be performed remotely, with the SonoBot located in Wabasca, Alberta, over 3500 km from the sonographer in London, Ontario. This marked a significant milestone as Canada's first long-distance teleoperated ultrasound scan with real-time haptic feedback. Later in the year, the focus shifted to Autonomous Intelligence and the Deep Space Healthcare Challenge. Wosler introduced an advanced version of the SonoBot, capable of operating in low-connectivity areas, including spacecraft on deep-space missions. This robot demonstrated the ability to autonomously manipulate the transducer for safe ultrasound procedures, as showcased in a deep vein thrombosis (DVT) scan on a phantom appendage. The robot’s self-assessment capabilities and 3D reconstruction of thrombi underscored its potential.

After such a successful 2022, 2023 did not disappoint! 2023 was a year of commercial product development, not just prototypes. The team was incredibly successful in the complete overhaul of our SonoStation and SonoLink components. 

The primary goal for the whole year was to explore every nook and cranny of our prototype software in SonoStation and SonoLink, optimize it and reconstruct it into rock-solid modules. Turning 5,000+ lines of spaghettified code, where every bug is a needle-in-a-haystack, into over 50,000 lines of concrete, bullet-proof, intentionally designed modules. This doesn’t even include the last component of the SonoSystem, the SonoBot, which will follow suit at the turn of the year! 

The Wosler SonoStation was our highest priority this year since it is the only part of the system that can be continuously improved with active sonographer feedback. We performed two usability studies so far, one this year. From these studies, we were able to capture highly valuable feedback which paved the path for current and future optimizations. First and foremost, we abandoned the development of our own custom haptic motion controller and decided to commit to a tried and true haptic robot provider. The addition of the Haply Inverse3 to replace our Rev 4 input device accelerated our development to a pace we have never seen before. The Inverse3 offers the best form factor, haptic sensitivity, adjustability, and overall sleekness that is unmatched by anything else in the industry. It is tremendously easy to develop with; in only a handful of weeks, we completely switched away from Rev4 with drastic performance improvements. This switch was instrumental for the Wosler development roadmap.  It allowed us to remain lean on Wosler technology team members and focused exclusively on 1s and 0s, instead of the design, manufacturing and assembly of a completely separate robotic system. We are proud to say that we have officially locked in the motion controller component of Wosler SonoStations, with no major hardware, software or firmware changes left for the rest of technology development. 

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Showcasing our product has been a recurring theme this year! With each visual improvement to our SonoSystem, we are always gearing up for the next high-stakes presentation. This year we accomplished over 20 successful major demos—including 10 cross-continental ones with round-trip data paths extending as much as 10,000 km. This year we were able to put our technology in the hands of top-of-the-food-chain OEM ultrasound providers, with high hopes for big partnerships.

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The team operates on an Agile development methodology, where several small development tasks are started and closed every sprint. With this framework, incremental improvements are made and released to the full system every two weeks. The above figure shows the accumulation of “sprint points” which denote the amount of effort each minor task requires. To bring your attention to the uptick in the 4th quarter, the team's seen some recent productivity acceleration in the first week of November and is showing to be sustaining a higher development pace each sprint. This was made possible with the recent workflow and project management improvements, and the team buckling down extra hard in preparation for several 4th quarter, and New Year demos. 

Recently the team has started preparing for the commercialization of the product including the regulatory component that comes with it. The team made a switch to a new cloud-based QMS provider, with foresight against the daunting Health Canada, and FDA submissions. We nearly completed the phase one steps of QMS setup, building and onboarding. Much more to come in 2024; including procedure, product, risk management, and other important documentation. This will open the door for Wolser to get an ITA approval, which can enable us to do in-person trials and further evaluate the SonoSystem.  

Wosler has been incredibly fortunate to have hired or partnered with these absolute rockstars for the technology team: Matthew Da Silva, Bryan Lee, Jimmy Bright, Shreyas Lackshminarayan, James Hunter, Yue Zhou and Jai Sood. Each one takes on new challenges with stride, motivated by conquering hard and daunting work, and moving mountains with their unbelievable talent. Without this team, Wosler would not be anywhere as successful as it is today. It is both astounding and humbling to look back over these short 30 months and see the progress we’ve made and the hurdles we’ve overcome. I am very excited to see what 2024 holds.

Sincerely,