Company leader
Václav Potěšil
Co-founder
Optellum
Václav Potěšil is a co-founder of Optellum, an Oxford, England, company whose AI helps doctors judge whether lung nodules on CT scans are cancer. He began working on lung cancer as a researcher after his aunt, who had never smoked, died of the disease.
An Aunt's Diagnosis
Potěšil's aunt had never smoked a cigarette when she was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer, and she died just months later. The loss set the direction of his research: "This experience shaped my view of lung cancer as one of the biggest challenges in oncology."
Lung Cancer Research at Oxford
He earned an MPhil in computational biology at Cambridge and a DPhil at Oxford, where his supervisors, Professor Sir Mike Brady and Timor Kadir, later became his co-founders. At Oxford, he recalled, "we were one of the first in the world to be applying modern machine learning to support treatment planning for lung cancer."
Imaging and Robotics Work
Potěšil developed cancer imaging technology at Siemens Healthineers and Mirada Medical. He then served as global product manager at Hocoma, a maker of neurorehabilitation exoskeletons, where he launched new medical robotics devices.
Founding Optellum
Potěšil put off starting a company until he survived a serious mountaineering accident, which convinced him that life was too short to wait. He founded Optellum two months later, in 2016, with Kadir, Brady, Jérôme Declerck, and Lyndsey Pickup. The company went on to bring to market the first FDA- and CE-MDR-cleared AI solution for early lung cancer diagnosis, which US Medicare now reimburses.
Eleven Countries, Seven Languages
Potěšil has worked and studied in eleven countries and speaks seven languages. He also mentors founders at the Creative Destruction Lab, helping them with regulatory strategy, fundraising, and partnerships for deep-tech and healthcare ventures.