“The lockdown made it easier to juggle my classwork with my startup”
Pierre Bouquet © 2021 Alain Herzog
For someone like Pierre Bouquet, who’s busy with his studies and running a startup, the lockdown can have a positive side – it can save considerable time. This Master’s student in mechanical engineering created a startup, called BioT, nearly a year ago along with two business partners. He spoke with us about his experience and his business venture.
Your startup, BioT, has developed a system that uses artificial intelligence to track medical devices in hospitals. How did you get the idea?
Our CEO, David Compain, is an EPFL graduate and worked for two years as a management consultant in hospitals and clinics. He was surprised to see that healthcare staff often have to spend a substantial amount of time hunting down and then checking the medical equipment they need. That’s time they could be spending on their patients. He conducted a survey of over 50 staff members at various hospitals and found that 95% of them would be happy if they could use a system like ours.
Why did you decide to take part in launching the startup before you had completed your Master’s degree at EPFL?
I joined the team in September 2020 along with Andrea Veneziano, an EPFL Master’s student in computer science, in order to speed the development work on the BioT system. My role specifically is focused on the hardware. It’s a way to directly apply what I’ve learned in class. Of course, there are only 24 hours in a day – we often have to work on the weekends and have less time for social activities. But it’s an exciting challenge, and seeing our system actually being used in hospitals is very rewarding. I have to admit that the lockdown and the shift to online classes has made it easier for me to manage my time.
How does your system work?
Ours is a comprehensive system that can be customized for individual healthcare facilities. It helps staff manage medical equipment more efficiently by establishing a centralized inventory, indicating where each piece of equipment is in real time, and signaling when the equipment will require maintenance. All this information can be viewed by healthcare staff on an easy-to-use interface, while the data collected by our system feed into an artificial intelligence program that allows the healthcare facility to run more smoothly. We estimate that BioT can save staff over an hour of precious time each day. In addition, it can help facilities managers and maintenance departments cut their costs, considering that between 5% and 10% of medical equipment is never used. BioT can also reduce the risk of equipment being lost or stolen. I’d also point out that our system is fully secure and hosted in Switzerland.
What are your company’s next goals?
I’m currently working on improving our localization algorithm by incorporating machine learning capabilities. We’re also hosting another EPFL student for her Master’s thesis. She’s coming up with a way to cut the size of our tracker in half so that it can be placed on any kind of device. The current version of BioT, which works with a QR code and doesn’t have artificial intelligence, is now being tested at 12 healthcare facilities in French-speaking Switzerland. We’ll soon begin testing our next version – which will incorporate trackers and machine learning – at three local hospitals. However, BioT can also be used in other types of facilities. We’ve been contacted by EPFL’s food services unit, for example. Our business plan is quite ambitious and we hope to carry out an initial, CHF 1 million fundraising round by the end of the year. Several investors have already expressed an interest.
How have you been able to develop your business while you’re still a student and have yet to raise funds?
For now we’re not paying ourselves a salary, in order to cut costs, and we’re working at the La Forge coworking space for startups in EPFL Innovation Park. But what’s really helped finance our business is the many startup awards and grants we’ve received. These include Venture Kick, where we made it past the first round, FIT Digital, the START Lausanne award that we won in March of this year, and a Genilem award. We were also selected for EPFL’s BLAZE startup accelerator program, which has provided valuable support. This is a new program designed to assist startups founded by EPFL students, from their initial business idea through to the successful market launch of their first product.