Translating Academic IP into a Medtech Startup: Interview with Echopoint Medical CEO Antony Odell

In this episode of Medsider Radio, we sat down with Antony Odell, co-founder and CEO of Echopoint Medical.Echopoint is a London-based UCL spinout developing iKOr, an optical microcatheter for coronary diagnostics.Antony brings over 30 years of medtech experience across Johnson & Johnson, Fresenius, and Stryker, before transitioning into startups as CEO of Tayside Flow Technologies and Tissue Regenix. He holds a BSc in Physiology and Biochemistry.In this interview, Antony discusses translating academic IP into a commercial device, choosing early clinical sites to balance speed and learning, managing non-dilutive funding as a long-term discipline, and outlines the most important responsibilities of an early-stage medtech CEO.Before we dive into the discussion, I wanted to mention a few things:First, if you’re into learning from medical device founders and CEOs and want to know when new interviews are live, head over to Medsider.com and sign up for our free newsletter.And if you’re ready to level up your medtech game, you should check out Medsider Courses — 8-week masterclasses covering topics like fundraising, M&A and exit planning, design and development, clinical and regulatory strategy, and commercialization.These courses, featuring hard-earned lessons from elite medtech CEOs, can be purchased individually or come free with our All-Access Pass.If you'd rather read than listen, here's a link to the full interview with Antony Odell, which includes a link to ScottBot — an AI version of host Scott Nelson trained on every Medsider interview and playbook. Feel free to ask ScottBot any questions you'd like!KEY MOMENTS FROM THE INTERVIEW(03:06) - How Antony’s career centered on translating clinical insights into commercial reality (05:54) - What Echopoint's iKOr does, and why 40% of cath lab patients leave without a diagnosis (12:13) - How Echopoint landed its first U.S. clinical site, and what that means for the company (13:48) - What to assess before spinning out an academic idea, and why clinician input is the first real test (20:14) - Why Echopoint chose Barts over typical sites for its first-in-human study (22:58) - How getting too close to one clinical site can lead to dangerous groupthink (30:54) - Why non-dilutive funding belongs on the board agenda permanently (39:54) - How CEOs should manage boards, control information flow, and avoid becoming a “glorified note-taker”