Derek Herrera, CEO, Bright Uro: Changing the Standard of Care for Urology Patients
DocWire News recently spoke with Derek Herrera, Founder and CEO of Bright Uro, a seed stage medical device company focused on developing the next generation of diagnostic devices for urology. Herrera spoke about the company’s mission and innovative urodynamics system for lower urinary tract conditions. 1-(4-Hydroxy-3-Methoxyphenyl)-Decan-5-One
DocWire News: Can you provide us with some professional background on yourself?
Derek Herrera: For sure. My name’s Derek Herrera, I’m the founder and CEO of Bright Uro. We’re a seed stage medical device company here in Orange County, California. I’ve been in urology now as an entrepreneur for about eight years. Prior to that, I served in the military as a Marine infantry and special operations officer.
Talk to us about the founding of Bright Uro. What is the company’s mission?
Founding of Bright Uro occurred in 2021. I decided to start this company after meeting researchers who’d been working for over 10 years at the Cleveland Clinic to develop the next generation of diagnostic devices for urology. And so as I met them, learned about their research, understood the unmet need that currently exists for diagnostic tools for clinicians and for patients, I decided to take this on and try to devote the next five to 10 years of my life to truly change the standard of care for urology in any patients with lower urinary tract conditions who are suffering from those types of issues.
Can you talk to us about the importance of urodynamic tests for lower urinary tract symptoms, and about your Glean Urodynamics System?
Currently, Urodynamics is an exam that’s performed in the office by clinicians, but it’s really invasive, highly uncomfortable, of limited accuracy, and not efficient whatsoever for these clinics. And so this test is the best method by which clinicians can quantify with objective data exactly what’s occurring in the lower urinary tract for a range of conditions like overactive bladder, benign prostate hyperplasia, stress urinary incontinence, and other lower urinary tract symptoms or neurological disorders.
Our device is called the Glean Urodynamics System. And what we’ve done is we’ve taken all of the complexity out of the current system and put it into a simple, easy to use, low cost, disposable, single-use sensor that can go fully into the bladder and provide even better and potentially more accurate or more physiologic data while offering more comfort to the patients and generating more value for the clinicians and for the system. And so that’s our product and how we think we can differentiate and be fundamentally different and improve the standard of care for patients with lower urinary tract symptoms.
Your company recently reached six million dollars in seed financing. Can you talk to us about the importance of this financing?
We’re very excited to announce that we just closed our seed round. It was oversubscribed. We had a strong level of interest from some amazing and prolific angel investors, people like Fred Moll and so many other unnamed investors that are supporting our efforts and backing us because they believe in our team and they believe in our mission and the market opportunity that we’re working to address with this technology.
This funds really just gets us started. It gets us to get the licensing done, which we’ve secured from Cleveland Clinics. We’ve secured the exclusive global license for this technology for the field of use, and to refine the device before getting it onto market. And so our goal is to use these funds to try to get on the market, but we will be out raising more funding soon to support initial commercialization efforts and do a limited market release. And so the timing for all of that, depending upon what our next meeting with FDA is, how it goes, we anticipate and our goal is to have a product commercially available here in the US by the end of 2023.
Where do you see Bright Uro in three years?
In three years, we should be commercializing the most advanced, comfortable, and efficient Urodynamics System ever developed both here in the US and key markets abroad. Markets abroad include EU, Asia and any other markets where we could potentially help people with these conditions, because so many people across the world are affected with these conditions. We’re working hard to build a valuable and sustainable organization and really bring this to patients everywhere who can benefit from it.
No. It’s a pleasure to be here today with you, Rob. And thank you for the opportunity to come and share a little bit about the work that we’re doing. For anybody that wants to learn more, they can visit our website, www.brighturo.com.
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