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VR Surgical Training Platform Raises $20M, Further Solidifying VR’s Place in Medicine

August 11, 2022 From roadtovr

VR surgical training platform FundamentalVR today announced it has raised a $20 million Series B investment to further expand its VR surgical training platform. The company is among a growing list of companies taking root in what appears to be a prime use-case for VR.

FundamentalVR today announced it has raised a $20 million Series B investment, bringing the company’s total fundraising to a purported $30 million. The round was led by EQT Life Sciences and prior investor Downing Ventures. As part of the investment, Drew Burdon of EQT Life Sciences will join FundamentalVR’s Board of Directors.

FundamentalVR says it combines high-fidelity medical simulations with VR and haptics so that trainees can “experience the sights, sounds, and physical sensations of real-life surgery.” The goal, says the company, is to make it more affordable for medical institutions to bring “professionally accredited surgical training [to] their organizations.”

According to FundamentalVR, the investment will be used to “enable further development of [the surgical training platform], the machine learning data insights product, and [drive] geographic expansion throughout the US.”

“Our platform can conduct a walkthrough of a procedure through to a full operation, facilitating surgical skills transfer—which is why we have been enthusiastically embraced throughout the medical industry, from med-device manufacturers to pharmaceuticals” says FundamentalVR CEO Richard Vincent. “Our immersive environments transform surgical skills acquisition in a scalable, low-cost, multiuser way. We are excited to scale our vision of creating a medical education environment unhindered by borders.”

Image courtesy FundamentalVR

VR surgical training is a growing use-case that appears to deliver significant return-on-investment for organizations that would otherwise pay for most costly and/or less effective and flexible methods of surgical training—and FundamentalVR is far from the first company to have bet on this.

One of the leaders in the space, Osso VR, has raised its own small fortune of some $109 million, according to Crunchbase, and has also demonstrated the efficacy of VR surgical training compared to traditional methods.

Image courtesy FundamentalVR

Surgical training specifically is just one slice of where VR is being used in the medical field.

We’ve seen the tech used to train ultrasound operators to identify fetal heart diseases, and recently in preparation for a rare and risky surgery to separate conjoined twins. And let’s not forget mental health, where VR is being used to create safe and accessible spaces for therapy.

Needless to say, these particular projects are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to VR in medicine, a place where VR looks destined to be forever intertwined.

Filed Under: FundamentalVR, fundamentalvr investment, fundamentalvr series b, Medical VR, News, VR Surgical Training

Rare Conjoined Twin Surgery Aided by VR Training, Bridging the Gap Between Two Continents

August 3, 2022 From roadtovr

Practice makes perfect, especially when it comes to life-saving procedures that deal with extreme edge cases like separating conjoined twins. Now a UK-Brazilian team have done just that, which is thanks to detailed planning sessions which allowed the surgical team to model and rehearse the operation in VR from two different continents.

As reported by BBC News, three-year-olds Bernardo and Arthur Lima were born conjoined at the cranium, also know as craniopagus twins.

Now, after seven surgeries, the boys have effectively become the oldest craniopagus twins to have been separated, a process which concluded in a final surgery that lasted 27 hours and involved around 100 medical staff.

Bernardo and Arthur Lima before separation | Image courtesy PA, BBC News

The operation was carried out in Rio de Janeiro with direction from Great Ormond Street Hospital in London.

The planning stage took place over a six-month period which, lead by UK surgeon Dr. Noor ul Owase Jeelani, incorporated models of the twins based on CT and MRI scans which were imported into a program that allowed the Brazilian and UK teams to collaborate in real-time via VR headsets.

“In some ways these operations are considered the hardest of our time, and to do it in virtual reality was just really man-on-Mars stuff,” said Dr. Jeelani.

Bernardo and Arthur Lima after separation | Image courtesy PA, BBC News

Gemini Untwined, the charity founded by Dr. Jeelani, dubbed it “one of the most complex separation processes ever completed.”

“It’s a near impossible task [separating craniopagus twins] that requires a lot of thinking, a lot of planning, and when the final execution happens and you end up with two live kids that are making a good recovery is a great experience.” Dr. Jeelani said in a BBC interview.

Arthur and Bernardo will be celebrating their 4th birthday next month, and are making what Dr. Jeelani says is “an excellent recovery.”

Filed Under: Medical Applications, Medical VR, News, virtual reality medicine, virtual reality surgery, vr medicine, VR surgery

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