What You Should Know:
– ENvizion, the FDA 510(k) cleared leader for enteral feeding tube (EFT) navigation technology, has raised $18M for the ENvue system, its “Waze”-like tool for the human digestive tract.
– ENvizion’s device enables nurses to navigate the
feeding tube with the help of a real-time 3D map of the patient’s actual body,
and its sensor warns if the tube has veered towards the lungs.
– The company is also partnering with one of the largest private hospital
networks in the U.S. to bring the latest electromagnetic EFT placement
devices to its 100+ hospitals.
ENvizion, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based FDA 510(k) cleared leader announced it has raised $18M in funding from private medtech backers, family offices, and the Technion Venture Capital fund. In addition, the company has inked an agreement with one of the largest private hospital networks in the U.S., with more than one hundred hospitals, to provide ENvizion’s feeding tube placement navigation devices nationwide.
Enteral Feeding Tube ‘GPS’ Tech
Each year, nearly eight million feeding tubes are placed blindly inside patients in the United States for a variety of medical cases, but many of them are not placed with any sort of technical guidance. Blind placement can lead to a mistaken placement of the tube in the lungs, resulting potentially in pneumothorax, pneumonia, or even death. With a constant flow of hospitalized patients who require enteral feeding especially during the COVID-19 pandemic for patients who require ventilators the time-consuming nature of tube placement and immediate need for patient nutrition, and the limited resources hospitals have, Envizion is working together with various hospitals to minimize error and maximize enteral procedure efficiency.
The hospital network now has the opportunity to add ENvizion’s navigation device, “ENVue.” The device, which can cut the usual placement procedure time in half, harnesses the power of electromagnetic mapping to guide medical-support staff in placing the tube from the nasal cavity down the esophagus, and all the way through to the small intestine, the anatomical location where nutrients are absorbed by the body. To avoid placing the tube into the lungs and ensure the placement is executed correctly, the ENVue device provides guidance through a number of technical mechanisms:
Patient body mapping: ENVue creates an accurate map of the patient’s body by generating an electromagnetic field that connects the device’s computer and the tube tip. The tube tip’s location inside the patient remains highly accurate despite any movement by the patients during placement.
Multi-faceted vision: The ENVue device’s screen shows an axial, frontal, and lateral view of the patient’s body, so as to indicate the depth and height as the tube moves through the digestive system. This ensures that from three different angles, the support-staff member can ensure the tube is not in the trachea, and always in the digestive tract.
Directional guidance: The device screen guides the staff member placing the tube with an arrow that signals in white when the tube is fed in the correct tract, and red when placed in a direction that may potentially be harmful to the patient.
Combined, the three different mechanisms provide a significant layer of confidence to medical-support staff in patient care, minimizing the potentially fatal results of a blind placement and accelerating the procedure time itself for better staff resource allocation. ENvue will greatly enhance small bowel placements by providing vision at the bedside assuring accurate placement, quicker time to feeding and shortened ICU stays.
“We are very excited about the opportunity our work with these hospitals can bring to the U.S.,” says ENvizion President & CEO Doron Besser, MD. “The potential for our navigation technology to both greatly reduce detrimental placements and cut down the time required to place tubes will help clinicians perform the task much more confidently and efficiently.”
