Aalto-born Surgify raises a €1.0M seed investment round

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Aalto-born Surgify raises a €1.0M seed investment round

Published: 24.1.2018

The Surgify Safety burr prevents the nerve and blood vessel injuries that are typically caused by other surgical drills.

A surgeon using the Surgify Safety Burr in a simulated surgery. Photo: Surgify

The technology can be easily used with existing surgical drills, and its usage does not require any additional training for the surgeon or the staff. The patent pending safety mechanism prevents the drill from damaging vital tissues, such as nerves or blood vessels. Besides neurosurgical applications, the innovation can be used in the future also in spine surgery and in the fields of orthopedics and dentistry.

“The technology has raised great interest amongst hospitals and surgeons globally. For example, we recently visited Harvard University’s teaching hospitals in Boston, and the reception was enthusiastic”, tells Visa Sippola, the CEO of Surgify.

The technology has been initially developed in cooperation between Aalto University and Department of Neurosurgery at Helsinki University Hospital. The company aims to bring the Safety Burr technology to the market in 2019. The company thereafter plans to initiate sales in the Nordic Countries, after which it will expand the business to global markets. In addition to the easy adoption process of the technology, the considerable reductions in costs and surgical complications are expected to positively affect the demand for the solution.

“Our core mission is to make bone surgery safer, as we believe that our technology has the potential to save lives in the future. The fact that we also bring clear cost savings to surgery will be of help in carrying out that mission – for example the complications caused by the current surgical drills cost over 4 billion euros each year globally”, Sippola explains.

The investors joining the startup’s second round of financing include a Finnish venture capital firm Butterfly Ventures, as well as Cascara Ventures from Belgium, Merkatura AB (Andreas Bunge) from Sweden and FRIIH GmBH (Dr. Michael Friebe) from Germany. The funding will be used to finalize the neurosurgical burr and to apply for a sales approval in Europe.