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A patient had already signed every document — but no one had told her she would lose her stomach. That moment early in her anesthesia training convinced Marie-Isabelle Batthyány that informed consent was fundamentally broken. Years later, she built XRS Medical, a VR platform that replaces paper consent forms with immersive, avatar-delivered patient education and tracks attention in real time using a patented eye-tracking algorithm.

Batthyány walks through exactly what happens from the moment a patient puts on the headset to the moment an attention evaluation report is generated for the surgeon's file. The numbers back it up: 84 percent recall accuracy and 87.5 percent patient satisfaction versus paper forms that almost nobody reads. The platform creates photorealistic digital twins of the operating surgeon, delivers the explanation in the patient's native language, and produces a legal record that the information was delivered and attended to. With over 4,000 patient uses across Austria, Switzerland, Poland, and France, XRS Medical has moved well past proof of concept.

The business story is equally sharp. Batthyány designed the company for acquisition from day one — lean team, phantom shares program, three distinct revenue streams across healthcare providers, pharma, and medical device manufacturers. A surprise pivot into clinical trial consent with Boehringer Ingelheim turned out to be one of the strongest product-market fit moments of the journey. For clinician-founders navigating the European fundraising landscape with a disruptive technology, her playbook on investor fit, due diligence readiness, and the "three threes" rule is essential listening.

https://www.xrs-medical.com/

⏱️ Chapters:
00:00 Meet Marie-Isabelle Batthyány — anesthesiologist turned founder
03:00 The patient who didn't know she would lose her stomach
06:04 From clinical frustration to founding XRS Medical
07:23 Why paper forms and traditional videos fail patients
09:28 How the VR informed consent workflow actually works
14:40 The eye tracking algorithm and US patent
19:40 Early prototypes — from real VR film to digital avatars
26:04 Designing a company for acquisition from day one
28:24 Ideal acquirers: pharma, hospital groups, and three revenue streams
34:41 Advantages of being a physician-led European startup
37:04 How the core team came together
39:41 What medical school never taught about business
46:02 Where XRS Medical is heading: US, Japan, AI avatars
48:08 Advice for future clinician-founders
49:05 What "from idea to market" means: blood, sweat, tears

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This podcast is intended for educational and informational purposes only.

The content discussed does not constitute medical advice and should not be used as a substitute for professional judgment. Clinicians should rely on their own training, experience, and clinical decision-making when applying information from this discussion.

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