Openwater

About Openwater

Openwater is a medical technology company established in 2016 with the objective of creating a new generation of portable diagnostic and therapeutic devices. The company was founded by Dr. Mary Lou Jepsen, a prolific inventor and executive with a background in display technology, imaging, and computer hardware. Her extensive career includes leadership roles at Google X, Meta (Facebook/Oculus), and Intel, as well as co-founding the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) non-profit, where she was the chief architect of the $100 laptop. Jepsen, a brain tumor survivor, was motivated by her own health experiences to democratize advanced healthcare.

The core of Openwater's strategy is to merge advancements from consumer electronics, semiconductor physics, and artificial intelligence to create devices for diagnosing and treating a spectrum of diseases non-invasively. The company's platform utilizes a combination of high-resolution infrared imaging, holographic systems, precision-tuned ultrasound, and targeted electromagnetic fields. This technology is designed to see inside the body with the detail of an MRI and to therapeutically target diseased cells, such as cancer, or modulate neuronal activity for mental health disorders, without harming surrounding healthy tissue. The platform consists of two main systems: the Open-Motion 3.0 for diagnostics using near-infrared light to measure blood flow and oxygenation, and the Open-LIFU 2.0 for therapy using low-intensity focused ultrasound.

Openwater operates in the MedTech market, targeting a range of conditions including aggressive cancers like glioblastoma, neurological disorders, stroke, and mental health issues such as severe depression. Clinical and preclinical studies, conducted in collaboration with institutions like the University of Pennsylvania, UCLA, and Brown University, have shown promising results. These include shrinking glioblastoma tumors in mice, achieving remission in a significant portion of human patients with severe depression, and high sensitivity in detecting strokes. The company's business model is notable for its open-source approach, aiming to accelerate innovation and reduce the substantial costs and time typically associated with medical device development and regulatory approval. By leveraging existing consumer electronics supply chains, Openwater plans to offer its hardware at a significantly lower cost, potentially adopting a per-click or SaaS-like model where the diagnosis or therapy is the product, not the hardware itself.