Okava Pharmaceuticals is a San Francisco-based, clinical-stage company developing therapies to treat chronic diseases in dogs and cats. The company’s mission is simple and ambitious: to help pets live longer, healthier lives, extending lifespan by one to three years.
Okava specializes in repurposing validated human medicines for veterinary use, focusing on obesity, diabetes, and arthritis through long-acting, reversible drug delivery implants. By leveraging decades of human R&D, Okava addresses a long-standing gap in veterinary medicine while accelerating innovation for companion animals.
Cardiovascular imaging is essential to identifying and managing life-threatening conditions, yet interpretation remains a highly manual and time-intensive process. Cardiologists and radiologists often spend five to twenty minutes measuring a single cardiovascular scan, reviewing images slice by slice and measurement by measurement.
Across growing imaging volumes, these workflows create backlogs that delay diagnosis by days or even weeks. The impact is felt not only by clinicians under mounting pressure, but also by patients waiting for answers and timely care decisions.
These challenges are amplified in smaller hospitals and underserved regions, where access to specialized cardiovascular expertise may be limited. Without standardized tools to support interpretation, the quality and speed of care can vary significantly based on geography and available resources.
As AIATELLA prepared to validate its first cardiovascular imaging solution, the team needed to run a rigorous international study that reflected real-world clinical practice. Traditional trial structures and manual data capture methods were not designed for imaging-only validation and risked slowing progress at a critical stage.
AIATELLA designed a validation study focused entirely on cardiovascular imaging interpretation rather than traditional recruitment-based clinical trial workflows. The study spans multiple regions, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and Latin America, aligning with the company’s global ambitions from the outset.
To support this approach, AIATELLA implemented Captivate as the clinical data backbone for the study. Captivate provided a secure and compliant framework for capturing, reviewing, and managing imaging-derived data, while remaining flexible enough to support a non-traditional, imaging-first study design.
For AIATELLA’s small, medically trained team, this flexibility was essential. The platform allowed them to configure eCRFs, events, and validation rules internally, without relying on technical specialists or dedicated data management staff.
For a startup like ours, hiring a full-time clinical data manager doesn't make sense. Captivate allowed us to manage the study without adding that overhead.
Captivate’s intuitive build experience also enabled first-time users to take ownership of study setup with confidence.
This was my first time using an eCRF system, and it felt very intuitive and straightforward.
Together, this combination of usability and compliance allowed AIATELLA to move quickly while maintaining clinical rigor and regulatory confidence.
By aligning clinical validation with real-world imaging workflows and supporting it with Captivate’s clinical infrastructure, AIATELLA was able to launch its first large international study efficiently and with confidence.
The team established a compliant, scalable framework for imaging data capture while retaining full control over study configuration and iteration. Operational overhead was reduced, ethics review was simplified, and delays associated with rigid trial models or manual tools were avoided.
Most importantly, this approach allows AIATELLA to remain focused on the impact of its work. By automating measurements that once required significant manual effort, the company is working toward reducing diagnostic delays, improving consistency in cardiovascular imaging, and returning meaningful time to clinicians and patients alike.
AIATELLA continues to expand its cardiovascular imaging platform, with plans to validate additional imaging modalities and anatomical regions over time. While the company began with a focus on aortic CT imaging, its long-term vision extends across the full vasculature and into earlier detection and preventive care.
With Captivate supporting its clinical validation efforts, AIATELLA is positioned to scale research alongside innovation, ensuring that new capabilities can be validated and expanded globally without introducing unnecessary complexity.
Together, this foundation supports AIATELLA’s broader mission: advancing cardiovascular care by combining automation, clinical insight, and access, regardless of geography or resources.
