Overcoming Skepticism When Commercializing Novel Therapies

Key Learnings From Dmitri’s Experience

• Taopatch has scored some impressive publicity from world-renowned tennis player Novak Djokovic and famous actor Robert Downey Jr. But you can’t fake your way into that kind of spotlight. You have to have a working device and the capabilities to scale. Build steady momentum, and be prepared to seize those moments of luck when they come your way.

• When it comes to market development, first identify those who are receptive to what you're doing. Examine your potential partners’ business models and look for alignment. Once you have a solid base of customers, optimize for organic growth using customer testimonials and word-of-mouth. 

• Running huge clinical trials requires serious capital and resources. If you’ve already proven the safety of your device, you can use a creative strategy, like a money-back guarantee, to reach a greater audience and let their testimonials demonstrate the validity of your product.

Dmitri Leonov was on a different path before he found his way to healthtech. Upon graduating, he spent several years in investment banking and then a few more at Overture (later acquired by Yahoo). Bitten by the startup bug, he then launched Sanebox.com because he was excited to find solutions to address the growing problem of email overload to help with mental health and productivity. 

Dmitri had always been interested in the wellness industry. He says, “I wanted to work on something more meaningful, especially coming from Yahoo, where we had so many really smart people focused on optimizing clicks, essentially.”

Inspired by Einstein's prophetic quote, "The future of medicine will be the medicine of frequencies," Dmitri started thinking about frequency medicine. 

“If you look at the world from the quantum mechanics point of view, everything is a wave and a particle. It's a wave before it gets observed, and then it becomes a particle,” explains Dmitri. This fundamentally means we can influence things through resonance. While this might sound outlandish to someone from a traditional medicine background, Dmitri sees potential.

Driven by this fascination with the upside of frequencies, Dmitri co-founded Taopatch USA, a company offering frequency healing solutions for a wide range of imbalances. Taopatch – essentially a patch with conductor wires on it – is a patented, FDA-cleared, Class 1 medical device that merges ancient acupuncture concepts with the latest in nanotechnology and light therapy, aiming to provide a natural, non-chemical way for the body to reset and find balance.

Taopatch is like a tiny, wearable prism and mirror with embedded nanomaterials. When it’s placed on the skin, the patch captures the body’s heat, or infrared energy, and converts it into a broader spectrum of light. This light is then reflected back into the wearer’s body, targeting specific acupuncture points. “It's a combination of light therapy and acupuncture,” Dmitri explains.

Light therapy has a solid scientific foundation, with over 9,000 studies exploring its benefits for injury recovery, neurological disorders, mood enhancement, and more. Taopatch utilizes light to help the body "remember" how to communicate efficiently with itself, leading to improvements in balance, posture, sleep, focus, athletic performance, and pain relief.

The technology was first developed by Fabio Fontana, an Italian biomedical engineer who faced a debilitating injury. Desperate for relief from chronic pain, Fabio developed a form of light therapy that proved to be the only solution that offered lasting benefits for his health issues. His breakthrough was the discovery of a unique nanomaterial – quantum dots – which powers Taopatch and has been reported to help with conditions like Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson's Disease, pain, and fatigue.

The success of Taopatch made headlines last summer when Novak Djokovic credited it as "the biggest secret of his career." The company is now working with about 20 Olympians who will compete in the upcoming summer games.