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By Carrie Ghose – Staff reporter, Columbus Business First

When Medicare pays for your software, turns out it’s easier to persuade hospitals to use it.

Dasi Simulations LLC’s software, which helps heart surgeons plan valve replacements with AI-powered 3D modeling, has subscriptions that would annualize to ten times 2023’s revenue, COO Sean McKibben said via email.

“We are having so much interest now,” co-founder and CTO Lakshmi Prasad Dasi said in an interview. “That (Medicare) reimbursement has made a real difference in our ability to onboard new customers.”

This month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the startup’s second complementary software product.

The first, called PrecisionTavi, received FDA clearance as a medical device in May 2023, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services OK’d a payment code this January.

The software models in 3D how a patient’s unique physiology will work with replacement aortic valves of different manufacturers and sizes and indicates what complications could arise.

Dasi Simulations software uses AI and computer vision to generate a predicted image of how an artificial replacement aortic valve would fit with the patient’s unique anatomy.

Sales staff are making weekly presentations to heart centers around the country, McKibben said.

One of the largest U.S. health systems and six of the highest-ranked cardiac programs are among 16 signed commercial contracts, McKibben said. Nearly 30 more heart programs are in final contract negotiations.

Annual recurring revenue (monthly subscriptions times 12) is nearing $1 million, he said.

The newly approved product, Dimensions, automates the measurements that are fed into the prediction software.

Today valves are measured with rulers on 2D CT scans. Three different people can produce three different results, basing on which points on the image they choose to align the ruler, Dasi said.

Dasi Simulations software generates a 3D image of a diseased aortic heart valve from the CT scan.

The startup recruited cardiologists to “truth the data set” of heart scans from a diverse set of U.S. patients, he said. The software produces consistent measurements, fast – which the doctor can accept or adjust based on their own observations.

“Now AI can do what humans do to decide what points on the image to select to measure,” Dasi said. “Instead of replacing (the doctor), you can call it enhancing and augmenting. AI is helping not only speed things up but standardize how you take these measurements.”

Dasi Simulations spun out of Ohio State University in December 2019, and in early 2022 launched a pilot with two customers, one of them being OSU Wexner Medical Center.

Dasi, a biomedical engineer, took a joint appointment at Georgia Tech and Emory University in Atlanta in late 2021. Dimensions is licensed from Georgia Tech.

It’s too early to project revenue for Dimensions, McKibben said.

“Both PrecisionTavi and Dasi Dimensions offer increased accuracy and efficiency, and they are most effective when used together,” he said.

The company was a Columbus Inno Startup to Watch for 2023