– FundamentalVR lands $5.67M to expand its virtual reality (VR) surgical training simulation platform with haptics (the sense of touch).
– Platform is deployed with a number of medical institutions across seven countries, including Mayo Clinic and UCLA in the U.S., UCLH in the U.K., and Sana in Germany with initial training packages focused on the orthopedic surgical disciplines.
FundamentalVR, developers of immersive training technology for the surgical community has raised $5.67M in Series A funding led by Downing Ventures with participation from Tern Plc, Epic Private Equity, Brighteye Ventures, Mayo Clinic, and Sana Kliniken. The round brings total funding to $9.3 million allowing the company to further invest in its Fundamental Surgery education platform, the first surgical simulation software system to deploy HapticVR™, which combines virtual reality (VR) with cutting-edge haptics (the sense of touch).
Fundamental Surgery: Flight Simulator for Surgeons
Launched in August 2018. The Fundamental Surgery platform combines virtual reality (VR) with cutting-edge haptics to create a scalable ‘flight simulator’ experience for trainee and qualified surgeons, allowing them to experience and navigate the same visuals, sounds and feelings they would during a real surgical procedure. The platform is designed to be equipment agnostic, compatible with any laptop, VR headset or haptic device enabling it to be delivered at a fraction of the cost. Furthermore, its remote data analytics and data dashboard covering surgical skills and knowledge provide invaluable insight into surgical capability and education progression.
Benefits of HapticVR
With HapticVR, its proprietary technology that adds a real-time sense of touch. Surgical trainees can feel the movement and interaction of tissue, muscle, and bone as they would in an actual procedure within a submillimeter of the accuracy of resistance. Fundamental Surgery has a library of tools and tissue variants that mimic real-life sensations that have been calibrated by a leading team of surgeons and KOLs.
Recent Traction/Partnerships
Today, Fundamental Surgery is deployed with a number of medical institutions across seven countries, including Mayo Clinic and UCLA in the U.S., UCLH in the U.K., and Sana in Germany with initial training packages focused on the orthopedic surgical disciplines. The procedures it currently supports include Spinal Pedicle Screw, Total Hip Arthroplasty (Posterior), Total Hip Arthroplasty (Anterior) and Total Knee Arthroplasty. The simulations have been awarded Royal College of Surgeons and AAOS accreditation.
“We are very pleased to close our Series A round, especially as it includes strategic investment and validation from world-renowned medical institutions, Mayo Clinic and Sana Kliniken, where our platform is currently deployed,” commented Richard Vincent, CEO and co-founder of FundamentalVR. “The investment will allow us to continue to expand the global deployment of the current platform and develop additional capabilities and technologies, including extension of the platform into multimodal education encompassing new standalone headsets such as the Oculus Quest and Vive Focus Plus, covering new surgical disciplines such as general surgical procedures and future capabilities such as patient-specific modeling and emerging interfaces for robotic surgery.”
