September 21, 2020 – Osso VR, a provider of a virtual reality (VR) surgical training and assessment platform, has today announced that it has raised USD $14 million in Series A funding, led by Kaiser Permanente Ventures, with participation from SignalFire, GSR, Scrum Ventures, Leslie Ventures and OCA Ventures.
Osso VR’s training platform is designed for surgeons, sales teams and other healthcare professionals to address complexities in learning new procedures, refreshing on familiar ones, and integrating higher value medical devices by providing realistic, haptic-enhanced interactions in an immersive training environment that is both repeatable and measurable.
Amy Belt Raimundo, Managing Director at Kaiser Permanente Ventures, commented: “I have spent my career focused on the use of technology in clinical practice and know that proper training is critical to optimizing patient outcomes”. She added, “Being able to perform safe repetitions of procedures has great value, whether it’s for a new resident or an experienced physician who is learning an innovative procedure. Virtual means of training eliminate the restrictions of geography and associated travel costs, so that training can scale regionally, nationally and globally. Nothing has underscored the value of the distributed training model more than the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic.”
“Osso VR is one of the first companies to successfully commercialize VR as a scalable SaaS business offering an automated content creation engine. This delivers a transformational and lower-friction training modality than PDF guides and operating on cadavers,” added Wayne Hu, Partner at SignalFire. “Justin and the team are a force of nature, tackling the incredibly important challenge of closing the healthcare training gap, and we’re proud to have backed them since the very beginning.”
Osso VR states that it works with 20 teaching hospitals and 11 medical device companies in 20 countries, and has numerous engagements with leading orthopedic residency programs. The company’s VR training platform features custom content creation, a managed hardware leasing and support program, and advanced performance analytics that allow for objective assessment and review of technical skill data to give proficiency insight and maximize patient outcomes. According to Osso VR, its content was recently validated in a pilot study which showed that users trained with its platform performed surgery nearly twice as well as those trained via traditional means.
“Being on the frontlines as a provider gives me a daily reminder that we are facing an accelerating challenge with how we train for and practice procedures in medicine,” said Justin Barad, MD, CEO and co-founder of Osso VR. “We set out from day one with a focused mission: to improve patient outcomes, increase the adoption of higher value medical technology, and democratize access to surgical education around the world. Osso VR has done so much in such a short amount of time, yet we have much more to do. With strategic partners like Kaiser Permanente Ventures, we are ready to work together to ensure that patients all around the world have safe access to the best care.”
For more information about Osso VR, please visit the company’s website.
Video credit: Osso VR / YouTube
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Sam is the Founder and Managing Editor of Auganix. With a background in research and report writing, he has been covering XR industry news for the past seven years.