Stony Brook startup gets $100G in funding
William Moore, MD, 41, of Setauket, Right Dose, Inc., president, vice chair of Education in the Department of Radiology at Stony Brook Medicine, poses with the server used for data storage and remote installation, in the computer science lab Dept. of Radiology, at Stony Brook University Hospital, in Stony Brook, on Jun. 4, 2015. Credit: Heather Walsh
Right Dose Inc., a Stony Brook tech startup working on software that monitors radiation dosages for patients undergoing CT scans, has received a $100,000 investment from Accelerate Long Island and the Long Island Emerging Technologies Fund.
Announced Thursday, the funding -- a $50,000 grant from Accelerate and a $50,000 investment from LIETF -- will allow the small company to strengthen its marketing efforts and continue working on its product, called Scannerside.
Subtle tweaks radiologists make when operating scanners, and their typical 12 to 15 adjustment parameters, can increase patients' exposure to radiation. Right Dose says that Scannerside gives medical providers a way to view radiation levels and how they stack up against nationally recognized safety standards.
Scannerside -- which Right Dose has already sold to eight health care providers on Long Island -- does three things: measure radiation levels for a particular procedure, calculate aggregate radiation exposure over several procedures for repeat patients, and create a database for practitioners to compare their radiation levels with national averages.
"A little change in one thing can result in a significant change in the overall radiation dose," said William Moore, president of Right Dose and vice chair of Education in the Department of Radiology at Stony Brook Medicine.
"Unless you monitor the outcome of these machines, there's no way to know if you're within [safe] ranges or not," Moore said.
Founded in 2011, the company was born out of a desire to maintain quality control among Stony Brook's radiological specialists.
The company plans to use the money -- the first outside funding it's received -- to improve sales efforts and develop a second product, Scannerside Dose Check, which prevents radiologists from even turning scanners on if radiation levels are set too high.
"At the end of the day with a startup company, you're betting on the founder as much as you are on the products," said Mark Lesko, Accelerate's executive director. "We think he [Moore] was worth the bet."
