Vaclav Potesil

Chief Product & Strategy Officer, Optellum

Vaclav Potesil is an entrepreneur, AI innovator, and healthcare technology leader with over 15 years of experience translating cutting-edge research into commercial healthcare products. He is the founder of Optellum, a pioneering lung health company that develops AI-powered clinical decision support software to enable earlier diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer. Under his leadership, Optellum brought to market the first FDA- and CE-MDR-cleared AI solution for early lung cancer diagnosis, now used by leading healthcare systems and reimbursed by U.S. Medicare.

Over the past decade, Vaclav has led Optellum through every stage of growth – from scientific concept and product development to regulatory approval, fundraising, strategic partnerships, and commercial scale-up. He has established collaborations with global healthcare leaders including Johnson & Johnson, GE Healthcare, Medtronic, Roche, Bristol Myers Squibb, and Intuitive Surgical, helping position AI as a key enabler of earlier cancer detection and intervention.

Prior to founding Optellum, Vaclav worked in medical image analysis and computer vision at Siemens Healthineers, the University of Oxford, and Mirada Medical, where he developed novel technologies for cancer diagnosis and treatment planning. He also led product strategy at Hocoma, a global leader in neurorehabilitation robotics, driving the development and commercialization of innovative rehabilitation technologies.

Vaclav holds a DPhil in Engineering Science from the University of Oxford, where his research focused on medical image analysis and artificial intelligence for healthcare. As a mentor, he enjoys helping founders navigate the challenges of building deep-tech and healthcare ventures, from product-market fit and regulatory strategy to fundraising, partnerships, and scaling globally.