Successful organ transplants depend on quickly getting donor organs to their recipients. MediGO, now part of CareDx, pioneered logistics technologies that help make these life-saving procedures more successful than ever.

In Episode #39 of the MedTech Speed to Data podcast, Key Tech’s Andy Rogers and Lauren Eskew speak with MediGO co-founder Dr. Joseph Scalea about how data led the startup to solve challenges in the organ donation supply chain.

Need to know

America’s nationwide organ donor network — From Hawaii and Alaska to Puerto Rico, patients are on a nationwide waitlist for compatible donor organs.

Organ donation used to be local — As recently as the 1990s, most organ transplants came from local Organ Procurement Organizations (OPOs), so long-distance transport was rare.

Today’s organ logistics are complex — Every organ donation requires a singular supply chain combining private or commercial aircraft and ground vehicles to link fifty-six OPOs with hospitals.

The nitty-gritty

A practicing transplant surgeon and currently the Vice Chair of Innovation in the Department of Surgery at the Medical University of South Carolina, Dr. Scalea has seen a dramatic improvement in the efficiency and survivability of organ transplants.

Operations that once took hours are now routinely completed within an hour. At the same time, complication rates are at all-time lows. Many technological advances made these improvements possible, but Dr. Scalea saw opportunities in the organ transplant system’s operations.

“We have about twenty-four hours to move a human kidney from the donor hospital,” he explains. This tight turnaround led Dr. Scalea to explore the potential for drone delivery. “We were watching the [transportation] time go up,” he recalls. “We hypothesized that using drones to seamlessly go from the donor to the recipient hospital might allow the recipient side more flexibility to get better outcomes.”

Data that made the difference:

Data drove MediGO’s decision-making and ultimately led to a pivot from drone to supply chain technology. “We fundamentally believe that this problem is worth solving for the community,” Dr. Scalea says, “so what data are required to make this a business? It was through a combination of customer discovery, key informant interviews, and a ton of research into the space.”

Identifying the actual customer was key. “We initially focused on the transplant centers,” Dr. Scalea says, “and then fundamentally recognized the organ banks responsible for moving the organs were the right customers. Organ banks didn’t see as much immediate value in the biotelemetry. What they needed was logistics.”

From there, the MediGO team could understand their customers’ financial concerns. “We needed to understand funds flow — how those customers get reimbursed for the work they do.”

As a practicing surgeon, Dr. Scalea inherently understood the customer’s customers. “I was very fortunate to be an active transplant surgeon while standing up MediGO. Every day, I’d go to the hospital and ask myself, ‘Where’s the organ?’ This problem was real.”

“As our colleagues around the country read the research we were publishing, it became clear there was a groundswell of interest in this problem being solved.”