Basic VRa startup selling virtual reality and haptic software for medical simulations, Announce On Thursday, it closed a $20 million Series B round, bringing its total funding to more than $30 million.
The round consists of EQT Life Sciencesparticipate Downing Ventures, The Tern Company, and Sanaa Clinic, Third largest teaching hospital
German network.
FundamentalVR was founded in 2015 and has offices in London and Boston. The startup’s mission is to help surgeons become “human capable,” said co-founder and CEO Richard Vincent. This refers to a surgeon’s ability to become proficient in surgery before touching a patient.
FundamentalVR’s platform, called Basic Surgery, combines VR and haptics to realistically reproduce the sights, sounds and sensations that surgeons experience during medical procedures. According to the company, it has been deployed in more than 30 countries.
Surgery is a multisensory skill. Touch is essential to enable surgeons to learn and perform surgery; However, not all haptic solutions are created equal, Vincent claims. FundamentalVR’s platform differentiates itself through the use of skin and kinesthetic haptic technology. skin tactile feedback process touch, while Kinesthetic haptic feedback More complex. The force sensation it provides can stimulate both mechanical stimuli and stimuli related to an individual’s position and body movement. For example, haptic feedback allows her to feel the friction as the surgeon cuts into the bone. As she gets closer to the simulated tissue, she can feel the soft texture that mimics human tissue.
“While VR simulations with skin feedback are competent for medical education and training to aid knowledge acquisition, now adding full-force haptics can acquire skills,” Vincent said. “Fundamental Surgery has the ability to offer both, and to do it in a software solution rather than in a dedicated lab or machine.”
The company’s technology is hardware-agnostic, meaning it works with any laptop, VR headset, or haptic device on the market. Customers love the feature because it makes the platform more affordable and scalable, Vincent said.
FundamentalVR sells its software to medical institutions, as well as medical device manufacturers and life sciences companies that bring new products to market.Some of these clients include Mayo Clinic, NYU Langone, UCLA Health, Teleflexand Novartis. For example, Novartis created a haptic simulation with retinol injections that helped the company bring a new gene therapy to market, Vincent said.
While FundamentalVR has attracted many valued customers, there are many other companies in the medical VR space, including medical reality, Immersive touch and VR Skeleton. Vincent says his company is most like Osso VR, although he doesn’t believe it has a “competitor of its own.”
Vincent claims that most competing technologies have only one focus. Some companies focus on mixed reality without haptics, others offer skin haptics, and still others sell solutions within specific hardware. Vincent believes that FundamentalVR is unique because it focuses exclusively on the SaaS delivery of software that provides skin and kinesthetic touch.
FundamentalVR will use its Series B funding to invest in the development of basic surgery. The startup plans to expand the platform to support more medical disciplines, specialties and procedures, which currently include orthopedics, ophthalmology, urology and endovascular surgery. FundamentalVR also continues to build out its haptic and vision libraries to support new and more complex procedures and devices, and expand its activities in robotic surgical interfaces, patient-specific modeling, and genomic and regenerative gene therapy.
Image credit: FundamentalVR
