Anthony Vendetti: Okay. No, that’s great. I think — just because of — one last follow-up, because I spoke to a KOL on the pain center, who was very knowledgeable and said — he said he’s going to be recommending this to his colleagues because it’s pain free. You get an exact location where — so is there — I’m sure there is a plan, but maybe just elaborate on the plan to get more KOLs because we all know that health care is local. More KOLs on board on the pain management side? Or is there either simultaneously a plan to get into or penetrate more of the university hospitals where you can get further validation that your CompuFlo system is sort of a must-have versus the traditional way of injecting patients?
Arjan Haverhals: Absolutely. And that’s absolutely the case. So definitely, I know what’s going on, of course, but I’m a type of person that I only announce news when it is valid, whether this is confirmed and when there is a signature in place. But I can share with you that as we speak, we are adding clinics to the existing 2 clinics that we announced. And also automatically, these clinics will, of course, also work on the — not only the thoracic and the cervical indication as well as lumbar, and we’ll send in the documentation to the health care insurance providers being public or privately owned. That’s one side. On the university side, again, our potential and our opportunities have increased because we are not only dependent on labor and delivery.
With the thoracic cervical indication, we can go like we did in the University of Illinois — not Illinois, sorry, the University of Louisville, Kentucky, where at that time, they only decided to use it for the lumbar region in the OR, the pain and the labor and delivery. Now they have the other indication. But more importantly, we add the number of physicians that could benefit from the technology that we are providing, like neurosurgeons, surgeons in general, internal medicine. Because what I meant by that we have increased the accessibility to the total addressable market instead of only addressing 2.4 million epidural procedures doing labor and delivery as part of the total of 11 million procedures in the U.S. only as the total market, now we are in that position that we can address that entire market.
Like the cervical-thoracic junction is about what we always say, is twice than the lumbar pain market, that’s a large market. But now we are playing, and we have the potential to play in different segments of that market. And we all know that we are underpenetrated in that market. But with the tools we are having, now we have to execute and find additional partners that can help us in increasing the penetration and adoption of the technology in the medical segment.
Operator: Your next question for today is coming from John Korb, a private investor.
Unidentified Analyst: Anthony answered, you answered a lot of the questions that I had through answering these questions. I was struck by that day you announced that thoracic approval of the participation in the market. Milestone traded almost 2 million shares that day out of the blue. I was stunned by that. Maybe you were too that just told me that a lot of people, a lot of market observers and investors who are waiting for this approval. I didn’t even know that approval was untapped. Are you waiting for other types of approval from the FDA? Or is this set?
Arjan Haverhals: No. Well, if we wait for other approvals for the FDA, then it would be in total different areas. I think focusing on the current portfolio and the current technology, I think we are very well positioned and covered in the, I call it, the spinal region because we cover the entire spinal cord region. But more importantly, we cover all indications, procedures, diseases, therapies, et cetera, that are in the spinal region. So we can play a role in spinal cord stimulators. We’re looking into a combination of radio frequency, spinal stimulation, spinal infusion, et cetera. Now to your point, I can give you an example, and that is, of course, a market that we continuously analyze it, for example, the market of peripheral nerve block, right, which is the peripheral anesthesia for larger procedures where we have been granted a patent, not only in Europe but in the United States as well.
And that would be a potential next research and development area, and that would allow for a potential new submission to the FDA. But I don’t want to dream here. We have not initiated any steps in that direction. With the size of the Company and the organization, we have enough on our plate to work on day in, day out. I always say as a joke. Unfortunately, the day has only 36 hours. So we are trying to do whatever we can do to make things work. And I think you will be appreciative of the explanation to — or my questions — my answers to the questions that Anthony raised is, there’s a lot of activities going on in the background, like a simple thing like a thoracic approval or a CPT approval. It requires tremendous work of my team and I need to keep them motivated.
We need to create that good environment. There’s a very positive light in the Company based on the initial results of a simple thing on the portal. And that will help creating a high-performance team and a high-performance culture that we need to bring the Company forward. So I’m going a little bit sidetrack, but I hope I have answered your question in the professional way.
Unidentified Analyst: That feedback is very helpful because I wonder sometimes what is going on, I can only presume especially after that one day of trading after that approval was granted. The things are going on that I don’t know about as a shareholder.
Arjan Haverhals: No, absolutely, John. It’s a very good question. I just have one other comment to make just — because you said that you appreciate — you’re appreciative of the activities that are ongoing. So — also what we are currently doing from, in particular, in the dental market space, we have recently addressed much more the patients, right, because we always go to the dental professionals. And I’ve shouted at several months from the rooftop that I wanted to see a direct patient marketing approach. We have initiated that. And it’s very nice to see that in the last 2 weeks of the instruments that we sold ourselves direct, that our team has very — yes, executed very well from a professional point of view that the reason why a number of these instruments and new accounts were coming our way was because the patients were asking the dentist whether they had that technology available.
So that’s another activity that we are accelerating on tremendously because I’ve always said that — at the end of the day, if you or I go to the dentist, and we would say, do you have that technology because I don’t want to have any pain. And the dentist said no. And you would say, I will go to another dentist that your dentists would not be very happy because there’s no dentist in the world that likes to lose patients. So it’s just another flavor of the activities that are ongoing in our company.
Unidentified Analyst: Okay. Well, I have been a recipient of the STA technology off my dentist, and it’s wonderful. That gave me encouragement. At one point, we talked about this before. You had started out with 10 salesman for the hospitals and universities. And then you’re down to 5. Do you still have 5 salesman, or has that changed, too?
Arjan Haverhals: No. We have 3 full-time equivalents, and that’s also the reason why we have signed up in the middle of last year with CTI, Clinical Technologies Incorporated that have a footprint in 22 states in the United States. And for the time being, we are looking at more partners because we all know and we all are appreciative that the direct sales team is putting sufficient pressure on our balance sheet, so to say, from a direct cost point of view. Now of course, you can say going with a distributor, it will hurt your margins, absolutely. But that is controllable through pricing or through other activities. But it didn’t make sense for us and for management of the Company to continue to maintain a direct sales organization of 10, 11 people. And I have to be fair without significant success at that time. And I’d rather focus on creating shareholder value and keeping the financials of the Company in a good place and a good spirit.
