Good afternoon, and thank you for joining today's shareholder update call. My name is Hugh MacNaught, and I am the President and CEO of the company. Before we begin, I'd like to remind the listeners that today's call may include forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current expectations, estimates, and projections, and are subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied. For those just joining the call, I would request that you.
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Are tablets on mute? Thank you. I'd like to begin by framing the year and describing where we've come from. Throughout the year, we've been navigating a very challenging environment for capital markets while completing a significant phase of work related to development and regulatory affairs. We're exiting that VMS 4.0 approved, a stronger foundation for commercialization, a clearer path to scale commercial adoption, and early evidence that upgrades and go-to-market changes are working. The team has reviewed and updated the business plan. We've optimized the marketing processes, and we've begun to expand our commercial footprint. We're making tangible progress.
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All right. Put your computers on mute, please. We're making tangible progress on structuring the sales process, strengthening our partnerships, and preparing for growth once the necessary capital to enable that is secured. We're now shifting our strategic focus from building the company to actually scaling. As we look forward, our strategic focus is really shifting clearly from product development to commercial adoption and market expansion. The core of the strategy is to move VMS from research settings into routine clinical use. We're beginning with congenital heart defect centers and expanding into additional cardiac indications where accurate right ventricular volumes and measurements and comprehensive chamber assessment are critical. The shift is going to be expressed or manifested in five ways. First of all, we've been working at upgrading the existing sites. We've been upgrading current to VMS 4.0.
This is intended to ensure a consistent user experience, integrate software improvements, and establish a foundation for longitudinal patient monitoring. Hi. Could you please mute your phones or computers? Certain of our more research-focused sites have delayed the upgrades because of the need to conduct ongoing studies, but the majority have been moving forward VMS 4.0 deployment and are reporting very favorable results. The second factor here is we're moving from these early adopters and research use to routine clinical use. Beyond congenital heart defects, we're emphasizing indications where accurate RV measurement is clinically meaningful. This will include valve assessment and broader heart failure monitoring. Our goal here is to demonstrate that VMS is not only innovative but integral to routine patient care with faster and more accurate results than traditional imaging methods. Again, please mute your phones or computers.
We're working on generating a greater body of evidence. There have been 60 studies published to date, and while these prior studies have established credibility, we're now looking at establishing more current validation and also being able to demonstrate real-world outcomes. This new evidence will reinforce both the clinical and economic benefits of VMS. It'll help our hospitals and prospective customers to justify adoption and integration into care pathways. The business and revenue model is being evolved. We've refined our sales approach. The design here is intended to reduce the friction, to shorten the sales cycle, and create a more predictable stream of recurring revenue. We have introduced a device-as-a-service (DAS) subscription model, or DAS, as we're calling it. We view this as a key step in this direction.
By offering a subscription-based access, we make adoption easier for healthcare providers, while this is also establishing a stronger base of sustainable revenue for the company. We've also been engaged in modernizing the sales process. Previously, the sales approach relied heavily on in-person demonstrations. These are very costly and complex to schedule. Moving forward, we're implementing a virtual pre-sale demonstration. We're reserving on-site visits for installation, training, and validation. We believe that this approach will reduce costs, accelerate decision-making, and allow our sales team to reach more potential customers efficiently. Commercial execution is also something we're very focused on, of course. We are building an expanded commercial team. We've engaged several very seasoned candidates who are working on a contract and part-time basis, and they will convert to full-time status post-financing. The sites that have upgraded to VMS 4.0 report higher satisfaction, improved workflow, and enhanced diagnostic confidence.
These users are highlighting opportunities for workflow efficiencies and reductions in secondary imaging, particularly for cardiac MRI, which is costly, time-consuming, and often difficult to schedule. The feedback confirms that VMS can be integrated effectively into routine care pathways for longitudinal monitoring and contributes to improving patient experience and outcomes. We've been engaging with industry advisors and key opinion leaders to identify how VMS+ can support early diagnosis, treatment, and intervention, particularly in the rapidly growing heart valve repair and replacement market. This is currently estimated at a CAD 9 billion market in 2024, with growth of 10% through the next decade. These discussions are helping us to define the marketing positioning, our messaging, and product use cases that we hope will resonate with clinicians and administrators. The congenital heart defect program is now led by Joe Hostetter.
Joe is an industry veteran coming from companies whose work history includes companies such as GE HealthCare, Canon, and Siemens. He's working with us to actively develop proposals for both U.S. and international sites. I'd like to share that at the very recent British Society of Echocardiography Conference in the U.K., our lead for Adult Congenital Heart Defect Echo in London, Dario Freitas, presented a poster summarizing a multi-year study on adult congenital heart defect patients. The study demonstrated accuracy comparable to cardiac MRI, and it was very much of interest to us that the results were superior to native 3D echo. This reinforces the clinical credibility of VMS and supports adoption into adult centers as well as pediatric congenital heart defect clinics. In terms of demand indicators, we have a growing list of qualified leads both in North America and Europe. Our partners like AngioPro have indicated similar dynamics.
With regards to partnerships and our international expansion, I'm very pleased to share that our German partner, AngioPro, participated in the recent private placement and has committed to increasing their focus and support of VMS. Our work with the San Antonio Vascular is ongoing, and the integration is nearly complete. We have begun a joint commercial outreach to pediatric centers. They're about to launch a social media push, and I believe that will be going out as early as next week. We continue to collaborate with the Ollie Hinkle Heart Foundation. They are continuing to open doors and to raise awareness of VMS. Our licensee in China, Leishman Global, we're advancing on that license. They have purchased components for 10 systems. We have sent an application specialist to China. He's been there for two weeks and is actually just returning. Initial results seem to be very positive.
They've installed a number of systems in the most prestigious center in Beijing, and we hope that that will leverage into significant sales in 2026. We're also very interested in India and South Asia. We've had ongoing engagement with prospective partners. We've engaged a fellow, Dr. Singaram, to assist us with pursuing distribution joint ventures and capital for the company. In the next couple of weeks, we'll be announcing a new partner coming on board who is working with us to build a more structured and much more sophisticated return on investment analysis program that will model economic and clinical outcome benefits related to VMS adoption. I feel that this will be a very powerful tool in terms of placing product. With regards to the product manufacturing and life cycle, the magnet-free sensors, of course, have now been manufactured. They've been successfully validated. We've updated the manufacturing process.
In terms of the components for the system, we have done a life cycle review. We've ordered for manufacture of 25 systems. This should give a sense of our outlook for the coming months. Very happy to report that we passed our quality audits in September. This required a significant investment of time and effort and really is a testimony to the efforts and professionalism of our team. In terms of future development work, this is very targeted and driven by market insights. We're looking right now on an ongoing basis in terms of improving workflow integration, creating better automation, and any new features will definitely be tied to market insights rather than R&D-led speculation.
In terms of the finance and capital plan, I'd like to take a moment to thank each of you, our shareholders, for your patience, your confidence, and your ongoing support during what's been a very complex period. We're very aware that financing activities and product development cycles can be challenging from an investor perspective. We'd like you to be reassured that our team is committed to minimizing dilution and to execute as best we can on our strategic objectives. Your trust and your support are critical to realizing the value of VMS and for us to realize our broader vision. Could you please mute your computers or phones? We've engaged in a number of private placements this year. These were structured to minimize dilution, while enabling us to maintain progress on development and core operations.
We continue to actively work with several investment banks and marketing groups to secure capital as conditions improve. Capital is really the gating factor for the speed of execution. We have a good plan. We're ready to execute. The milestones are very apparent. The capital is what unlocks the velocity on this. Looking ahead, looking at our value drivers over the next 12 months, we've really identified five areas that are key to us. The first is establishing commercial traction in high-volume echo centers. Hi, could you please mute your phone or your computer? The second one is clinical innovation. Yesterday, we announced entering a collaboration with Providence Health in British Columbia. This is an example of that. We're looking to actually actively engage in.
Clinical innovation initiatives with selected partners to really prove or demonstrate the value in congenital heart defects, cardiotoxicity, pulmonary hypertension, valve dysfunction, and other use cases. The third driver that we're looking at is more sophisticated ROI models. These ideally will reflect a reduced need for MRI and better economics from pursuing a pathway that involves VMS. We're looking at how best to enhance our VMS platform, whether this is sort of additional AI, whether it's automation of certain features, or addition of novel analytics. The final component here is really one of entering into additional strategic collaborations. We've been in recent discussions with a couple of valve companies. We will be looking to find other companies and technologies that are synergistic with both Ventripoint and VMS. In closing, we're ending the year with what we feel is the right product.
We've got the right partners and a market that is clearly moving towards wanting to adopt reproducible, scalable, and accurate cardiac imaging. VMS 4.0 now represents a substantially improved product. The product user fit is much better than it was even 12 months ago. We have a clearly defined commercialization strategy. We're building stronger clinical partnerships and international collaborations, and we're building a roadmap for measurable clinical and economic impact. The execution now really depends on the sequencing of this and the capitalization of the company. We're very active on both fronts. We'd like to thank you for your support. At this point, we'll open the line for questions. I will try to read each question aloud before providing the answer. You can ask questions through the chat function on Zoom. Once again, thanks for joining the call. Look forward to sort of addressing your questions here. Okay.
The first question: Were the revenue goals for 2026 in U.S. dollars or Canadian? Good question. We're just in the process of finalizing that. I think what we need to push towards very strongly is exceeding CAD 1 million in revenue. That really is the first threshold. From there, the intention is to get the scaling rapidly, almost geometrically. The progression should be 1 to 5 to probably 12 to 15. We will formalize this, but at a high level, that's the direction we're pushing this in. Definitely, I think in terms of the 25 systems that I mentioned, that should give people. A better sense of how this shakes out. Question here. Concerning Mayo Clinic's late 2024 purchase, has the site been upgraded to VMS 4.0, and are they running an evaluation much like the new one with Providence? Yeah, great question.
First of all, the system was installed early in 2025. A number of users have been trained on the system. On a recent site visit, we learned that their volumes on the system are actually increasing, which is very encouraging. I think they're very comfortable with the results and looking to expand the scope of use. We have a very interesting challenge there in terms of the size of their operation. They have 40 echo rooms in their cardiology department. Right now, it's sort of a question of how do they expand from using this for specialized and research purposes to more of a broad scope, recognizing that they don't have complete predictability on how patients are presenting and which room to steer them to.
We're going to get back to them with a new proposal looking at how to install multiple units and see what we can do to assist them with shifting this into routine use. Question here from John Reesing. Reviewing the GE HealthCare status and other OEMs. In terms of GE HealthCare, a couple of years, several years ago, we had engaged with them. They had requested that we develop an integration with their products to be placed on an app store or an app garden, I believe as they called it. We were the first and only vendor to qualify under that. However, it turned out that this was really an R&D project and did not have a close linkage to their operating business or commercial business. It's a little bit in limbo.
We're working to reestablish contact with GE HealthCare. There are a couple of initiatives where I think at a functional level, we'll begin to reengage. I would also share that we added an advisor earlier in the year, Stuart Gall. He was the CEO of Intelligent Ultrasound. Some of you may be aware that Intelligent Ultrasound sold their cardiac AI business to GE HealthCare. Through Mr. Gall, I believe that we will have additional contacts within GE HealthCare and hopefully higher-level contacts where we can establish commercial discussions. From Philip, do you think we will see sales until the end of the year? What about the NHS hospitals in the U.K.? Yeah, we're pushing very hard over the next four to six weeks to bring in some sales. Hope to have some news on that very soon. With regards to the NHS.
East Midlands Hospital, although we haven't announced it formally, is a reference center for us. They're actively using the product, so that's going very well. Earlier in today's presentation, I mentioned Dario Freitas, who is at Guy's and St. Thomas' Hospital in London. He's been very happy with the system. He's looking to acquire it now. Actually, we aspire to place additional units there. We have a little bit of a challenge because the hospital trust or the healthcare trust that Guy's and St. Thomas' is in is now in the process of amalgamating with the Royal Brompton. This will be an absolutely massive organization. We believe that we're well-positioned. We want to work with them very closely on harmonizing four different cardiology sites. As well, we've identified another 8 or 10 possible leads in the U.K., very well-qualified leads.
We expect to have an announcement regarding one of them, hopefully before end of year. It's just going before their ethics committee at the moment. Another question from Philip. What is the timeline for potential for sales in China? Interesting question. I think early in the first quarter, we'll begin to see sales. We're pushing for a Chinese FDA approval on the product. We're giving very active support to the licensee. At this point, I can't give an accurate timeline on Chinese FDA approval. We're aspiring to get this done within a year. My understanding is that a number of sales will be permissible prior to approval. These would be in tertiary care centers and research centers. Beyond that, of course, there's very dramatic opportunities for sales and revenue.
Mark is asking at an earlier shareholder meeting this year, you were anticipating a couple of sales to NHS, two with Ollie Hinkle, hopefully by end of quarter two, and also meaningful sales. Are they still forthcoming? We believe they are. It's been frustrating in terms of the pace of this. I've just touched on the unit or units for NHS. Contact with them weekly. Ollie Hinkle has referred a site to us, a new site, so we're following up with them. There's a site in the Western U.S., supposedly with or allegedly with financing. We're in frequent contact with them regarding the release of that financing, and that would be for two units. We're also looking to get additional placements of units within the next four to six weeks. I was on a call early this morning with a site in the Eastern U.S. that's looking very encouraging.
We have another one in the Southeastern U.S. that we're hoping to arrange a demo and close a sale for prior to year-end. My understanding is that they do have funding available for that. Justy is asking, was there a charge for existing sites to upgrade? Can we share what they were charged? There's been a spectrum or a range of charges for the upgrades from free to full price. At this point, we're not really disclosing this externally. That's considered to be confidential. I would say the take-home point here is that we're working very hard to get all of these sites onto some sort of subscription basis. Even sites where product was placed at no cost in return for research, we're in the process of updating those agreements to have them begin to subscribe to either service or the device-as-a-service (DAS) model. Question here. India seems promising.
Do you believe you'll have a partner by the end of 2026 to run trials, get approval, and sales rolling? I believe the answer is yes. I had a discussion last week arranged by Dr. Singaram with the owner of a hospital. He's very willing to have us situate product on site and use him as a demonstration center. We've just got to build a little bit of infrastructure behind him. I'm getting very positive signals on that front. Philip. What are the plans for greater financing in 2026 to drive sales, team, etc., forward? In a perfect world, we would do a significant financing at an acceptable valuation and just really focus on steering this company into growth. The reality is I think we'll have to do a couple of smaller financings on the path to that.
I think the goal now is really to build more runway here, get a stronger foundation. We believe that by the end of Q1, the company will look substantially different. I think we will have had further traction through our financing partners, and there will be better-resourced investment partners at hand. Yeah. This question, what is the ideal capitalization requirement to execute the sales plan? Is this expected to be obtained through revenue or through dilution or a mix? Near-term, this needs to be through investment capital. Once we're beyond Q1, I would hope that this is a mix. Ideal capitalization, I would say, would be in the range of CAD 1 million to CAD 1.5 million to really get this rolling. Does the Ascend Partnership's business metrics match with the DAS for Ascend's current clients moving forward? Yes, it will. We've taken more of an incremental approach with Ascend.
Matt Dobson, our Marketing Director, has been working very closely with them on product definition and building out the development plan.
Garret, come in. Where are you?
Hi. Could you mute your phone or computer, please? Matt has worked with this team over a week.
Get it to their start. Please. All right.
Please mute.
We're going to list.
Yeah. We're very close on that. Karl Pringle, our Sales Leader, has been working with their commercial team on joint presentations. We've actually been collaborating on presentations to existing and prospective customers. On that front, it's actively advancing. We are working somewhat in parallel at the moment rather than integrated. That being said, I think we actually are perfectly positioned to pursue the device-as-a-service (DAS) subscription model.
Once the technical integration is complete and they are essentially reselling the product, we'll have to sort of update the DAS model specific to Ascend's offering. Matt H is asking how many potential investors are in active discussions and what are the stage gates for their decisions. In terms of certain sales completed sites, etc.? What is the timeline for the pilot to decision for Providence Health? A few questions here. We have a number of investors. I'm not going to disclose how many. We've actually got one who could put in CAD 2 to CAD 3 million, I think, very easily. However, what they would require is a lead investor to really perform the due diligence. We have not yet secured a lead sort of able to put in that quantum of capital and commit to the necessary due diligence. We're pushing ahead on that.
We have a different investor who has signed a term sheet for CAD 0.5 million, and we're looking to pin down the timing of that. In terms of the timeline for the pilot to the decision for Providence Health, that question is a little bit vague. In terms of Providence Health, our aspirations are to really scale this up to a national scale and then to be able to deploy those learnings internationally. In terms of the timeline here, we have meetings with their clinicians later in November. That'll really define the project. We've been in contact with additional potential partners for that project. I think we begin to sort of make headway during this quarter. We anticipate product being or VMS being installed at St. Paul's in early Q1 and then rolling out to one or more centers. Probably in Q2.
This is rapidly evolving, but I think in a very positive way. I think with the next partners we're planning on bringing in, this will give us the sort of profile and the scope to begin attracting a substantial amount of non-dilutive capital. I think there is concern about small, remote, and indigenous communities and ensuring that they have equitable access to high-quality cardiac imaging. I think this will be very timely and very much of interest to funding parties. The great news is this is non-dilutive capital, and I think most investors should be reassured by that. Question from Philip. When the Ascend relationship now goes live, what kind of numbers regarding sales do you expect here and what size of revenue? That's really to be determined. I think part of our learnings with recent sort of interactions with Ascend is that they've been working primarily through channel partners.
It's a case where they're now developing stronger capabilities internally in terms of both marketing and sales. This cascades down to forecasting and projections. At this point, it's really kind of additive to our existing plan. The other thing with Ascend is I think they're putting a very strong emphasis and push on pediatrics. We're hoping that they would be in the low double digits next year in terms of placement of systems. Any updates on the trials that we've been running over the years? Duke, Montefiore, etc. Yes, we're still in contact with our users. Seattle has now progressed from sort of research use to using it in routine clinical practice, so their volumes are increasing. We've got another proposal in front of them for additional units. Interestingly, they're now getting referrals from other centers. Adult patients from the university hospital are now being referred there for VMS.
We're very encouraged with that. I've mentioned Guy's and St. Thomas', so we had a successful conclusion to that project, and we're now looking to roll that into routine clinical use as well as expansion to the other sites within the new amalgamated health trust there. The study at Duke is ongoing. They've now committed to a subscription, so that's encouraging. Off the top of my head, that's where we stand with a number of our studies. Philip has a lot of questions today, I see. Can you say something about the relationship with Fornell Advisory and what they're working on? Yeah. There are three aspects to our engagement with Fornell. One is to raise capital, preferably from family offices or high-net-worth individuals. There is a very active outreach on that front. I'm in contact with them twice a week on that front, and the list is growing.
The second category is business development activities. We've had a number of meetings and engagements with other ventures with technologies or customer bases that would be synergistic with both Ventripoint and VMS. Those are proceeding. Nothing yet has got to the point of consummating a formal agreement, but I believe that we're conducting a very effective outreach there and seeing some very interesting possibilities. A little bit outside of our agreement with them, they have been working at making some introductions to clinicians in Paris and in France. We've now been in contact with some very senior cardiologists, people who are actually in decision-making roles with the government. I believe that this will facilitate market entry and hopefully adoption of VMS within French hospitals. The final category is eventually looking towards acquisition partners or potential acquirers for Ventripoint. Could you put your phone on mute, please?
There is an outreach to potential acquirers. This will be a longer-term project, but that is also in play. Justy is asking if the placement at St. Paul's is a purchase. We're working on the specific structure in terms of that. We're currently pursuing non-dilutive funding that we hope will result in the subscription to several systems. That's the status of that. This is evolving quickly, and in a month from now, I think we'll be able to report more specifically on that. With the engagement of Summit, we will have a new release concerning Summit coming out within a couple of weeks. I prefer to hold off until that time to be more descriptive of the nature of the engagement and what the deliverables are. Lord Jason Scott Gunter is a Canadian government in the picture at all? Not yet, but we're hoping very soon.
In fact, I hope within weeks we'll be able to report something on that front. Another question here regarding a timeline regarding the finish of the ROI research paper. This will be a process. I think ultimately it'll take probably more than 12 months to complete. I think with the. The way this is planned, we're going to have multiple centers that actually pay to participate in this study. We'll be generating results as early as Q1, but really the depth and completeness of results will build over time. I think a year from now, we'll have something that looks very elegant. The initial feeling is, I think by looking at this a little bit differently, we're hoping that we can demonstrate savings per hospital in the seven-figure range through the use of VMS. Question from Nigel. I know the Germans have been big fans. Dr.
Lazar, being a leader in Europe, are they looking to purchase as well? Yes, we've re-engaged with AngioPro. As I mentioned, they have participated in the recent convertible debenture offering. We're working with them now to sort of evolve capabilities in Europe. The ability to do these on-site demonstrations has been a real bottleneck and frustration. It's also expensive in terms of us having to fly people to Europe. This clearly is not scalable. They have been able to recruit a very senior stenographer who has a commercial orientation, so we're getting them trained. We'll be more active and more local in terms of being able to do demonstrations. We have one site there that we understand has funding approved for two systems, so that is on the radar right now, and another site that we feel we have the opportunity to close before year-end.
A question here going back to the ROI studies. The ROI research would be live workflow in clinics. That's exactly it. We're looking at real-world evidence, so looking at integration of VMS into workflow, but also the greater impacts within the hospital or the system. Just to provide some context or background, a lot of our focus to date has been more on outpatients, and the ROI calculations really are based on or premised on a reimbursement times number of procedures. One patient, one procedure, one reimbursement. Recent insights are leading us to believe that there's a much more powerful sort of value proposition here, particularly in the case of inpatients. Diagnostic imaging is a bottleneck within hospitals. If someone is admitted with a cardiac complaint, they're put in a bed, and then will have to wait perhaps for an MRI.
It also turns out that cardiology is a very low priority in diagnostic imaging, so these patients may be occupying a bed for multiple days. We believe that there is a proposition that isn't so much based on that single patient and reimbursement of CAD 150 for a scan. It's based on the single patient and them occupying a bed that is costing the hospital or the payer CAD 6,000 to CAD 9,000 a day. That's what we're trying to drive towards. We believe that aggregates into a significant number per site. George has mentioned Brazil many times in the past. Any update there? Interestingly, yes. One of my contacts or someone in my network who is active in India actually owns a couple of hospitals in India. I had reached out to them for assistance both with development as well as finance.
They came back to me suggesting that actually Brazil was a very interesting market. I had a Zoom call with a number of stakeholders in Brazil very recently. I think there is a high potential there, and we're now pursuing that both in terms of urban centers, high-volume centers, as well as, interestingly, small, remote, and indigenous populations. This group is engaged currently in an outreach in the Amazon basin with indigenous people. Very interesting and a number of touchpoints there. Is it possible for hospitals in Europe, especially Germany, to bill the cost of VMS with insurances, or is it only possible to bill the patient directly? I don't know. I can get back to you on that. At this point, it doesn't come to mind what their reimbursement model is. Again, with Dr. Laser and Charité, I can't really comment on how they're billing for this.
Kerry Smith is asking if we can provide any information regarding our foray into heart valve work. Yes, we've actually made substantial progress. We've had meetings with the head of a working group for the European Society of Cardiology. They're looking to harmonize practices throughout Europe. Very timely interaction with them. We're going through a research proposal for a high-volume center in northern Italy. We're just looking at the structure and costing of that. That's very close at hand. We're getting some very interesting insights out of this. At least in the European context, there are approximately 150 centers that are doing valve procedures. Many of them have a reasonable degree of confidence in what they're doing right now in terms of imaging, despite the fact that VMS would provide certain benefits. What surprised us was the report that.
There are five times as many referring centers, so that's 750 hospitals where the patients are referred, and apparently the quality of echo studies is typically very poor and requires repetition. We've sort of entered this seeing an opportunity for 150 centers where probably in reality, at least in the European and British context, it's closer to 1,000. Here's another question. To follow up on Kerry, do heart valve producers see the potential in the VMS on first look? I believe the answer to that is yes. We recently had a video conference with the innovation wing or department of one of the major valve producers. They were pretty excited about it and are scheduling a follow-up meeting. We've since had another contact with a competing company, and it's been the same story. I think at least in terms of initial discussions, they seem very interested.
Matt H, in regards to the significance of Providence Health and St. Paul's Hospital, could this potentially lead Ventripoint to meeting the placement of around 100 units to trigger the eventual sale of the company? It seems like this avenue is one of the more promising of the last four to five. We certainly believe it has the potential to do that. This will be something we have to build on in a stepwise fashion. The first order of business is really working closely with the urban center at St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver, getting the sort of basic design and validation done, doing this in a way that we can begin rolling it out to more remote centers. I think with some of the other partners or potential partners that I've hinted at, this would very definitely lead to something more of a national scope.
I would point out in Canada, in congenital heart defects alone, there's 300,000 patients that require ongoing monitoring and reportedly 33 centers. That is just on the congenital side. Cancer oncology is a much bigger indication, and definitely the need to accurately monitor these patients before, during, and following their courses of chemotherapy treatment suggests a far bigger number. With aging populations and an increasing prevalence and incidence of both pulmonary hypertension and heart failure, that's a much bigger number. Finally, with valve dysfunction, literature is suggesting earlier intervention is definitely recommended and appropriate. That as well, I think, will speak to an increased number of centers wanting to adopt this. Anecdotally, there was recently a report from the Ottawa Heart Institute. They have initiated a million-patient screening program. They are proactively going out into the community, screening people for cardiac dysfunction.
We believe that VMS could be a great tool for them to use in that outreach. All of this, I think, builds into a substantial base of systems, a substantial base that is actually paid for or subscribed to. I think this will give us the profile and the visibility to make us more attractive to potential acquirers. I would also comment in terms of potential acquisition. Our Marketing Director has really been doing a deep dive into product development and ensuring that this is guided by market need. Looking at our technology and product roadmap as we move forward, VMS will evolve to a smaller form factor, and at some point in the future, will be, in our eyes, a software-only product.
I think as we continue to build the user base, to evolve the product, the end goal really is to be able to embed this into the technology stack of ideally multiple manufacturers, whether it's GE HealthCare, Philips, Siemens, Mindray, or Canon. I think there's huge potential. Kerry Smith the user of VMS 4.0 generally happy with the product, or do they want to see additional improvements? I would say on balance, they're happy. I think there was actually a big improvement with the introduction of the magnet-free sensors, which technically was with version 3.2. The additional automation in VMS 4.0, I think, has been very well received by them. I think part of the ongoing engagement with customers and users is getting their insights and suggestions for further product enhancement. Yes, I think on balance, they're very happy with where the product has got to.
I think they see additional opportunities for us to help them better integrate this into their workflow. Justy, do you know of any competitors that are catching up to Ventripoint? I would say no. I think there's a number of competitors that make similar claims. Our feedback from actual users has been that these solutions really are not quite there. One of them being TomTec. I think they have a very sort of broad functionality, but definitely in terms of accuracy of right ventricle volumes and ejection fractions, we're hearing that this is not really equivalent to MRI. If you look at our technology and product offering, I would say the. Our castle, if you could describe it that way, really is the KBR database. This has been built up over 20 years. It's thousands of MRI images.
That is a huge task, especially in today's environment where I think there's enhanced sensitivity and consideration of privacy, confidentiality, and informed consent. This would be even more cumbersome to put together. KBR definitely is a castle, and I think at this point, I've seen nothing like it. Our VMS software is really the moat that surrounds that castle. I think we're on pretty good grounds there for the next few years, at least. Nigel is saying, "Feel free to send me the 4.0 machine, and he'll walk it over to Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio." They had an earlier version. Actually, I would love to reestablish contact with Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. Earlier this year, we sponsored the adult congenital heart defect meeting in Toronto. That conference was actually a joint venture, a joint activity between Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto and the hospital in Columbus.
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would very much like to reengage with them. As we come to the end of the call here today, I would thank you again for all of your understanding and support and continued interest in Ventripoint. It's been a challenging year, but we continue to move the company forward. I think we feel very confident of the technology and our prospects and look forward to reporting some exciting things over the coming weeks and months. Thank you again.