Georgina Ferry interviews Rajarshi Banerjee, CEO Perspectum and former student of Oxford Medical School, 14 March 2023.
Topics discussed include (00:00:08) early interest in science, entry into medical school at Oxford, interest in research, registrar training programme in cardiology and internal medicine, British Heart Foundation funding for a PhD; (00:04:21) PhD studies at Oxford on cardiac MRI (to discover whether people with excess bodyweight accumulated fat in their heart muscle and whether that fat impaired its function); (00:06:12) biomedical engineering; (00:07:34) quality of MRI imaging in 2008; (00:09:44) interest in improving MRI imaging; (00:14:01) liver disease research; (00:17:00) formation of company and founding of Perspectum in 2012, work with Sir Michael Brady, Matt Robson and Stefan Neubauer; (00:20:05) company progress; (00:25:22) first awareness of COVID-19; (00:29:59) multi-organ involvement and role of Perspectum; (00:33:23) CoverScan, including collaborators, long COVID; (00:43:39) adoption of the technology clinically, scan findings; (00:50:44) MRI units using CoverScan; (00:51:25) pivot towards this work during the pandemic and impact on the company; (00:54:28) community diagnostic centre; (01:01:52) current patient throughput, including patients with long COVID; (01:05:54) organs CoverScan investigates; (01:07:54) signs CoverScan investigates in organs; (01:10:19) expense of CoverScan and comparison to separate scans; (01:12:22) NICE; (01:14:35) patient groups; (01:18:13) personal threat from COVID-19; (01:20:38) sense of wellbeing whilst working during the pandemic; (01:22:19) changes in attitude to work as a result of the pandemic.
