Surgical collaboration app Chiefy announced this week it had raised $4.2 million in a seed funding round led by LionBird with participation from Nina Capital and Emerge Ventures.
WHAT THEY DO
The startup offers a chat and communication platform that allows members of the surgical team to hold a pre-operation briefing virtually instead of relying on in-person meetings or text messages, emails and phone calls.
Chiefy pitches the tool as a way to better surgical quality, as huddles — or short meetings to share information and discuss the surgical game plan — have been shown to improve patient care and surgeon satisfaction. The startup argues an asynchronous and digital approach to huddles could allow more providers to participate.
The company said it plans to use the funds to speed product development and find new health system and hospital customers.
“When everyone is forced to do more with less, we must find new ways to employ technologies to help clinicians focus on what’s important,” Chiefy cofounder and CEO Maya Ber Lerner said in a statement. “Chiefy is built to challenge the idea that if hospitals want high quality, they need to be slower, or clinicians need to suffer. We believe that quality, efficiency, and clinician experience can be a win-win-win. This requires building a culture of trust, and our technology serves as an enabler for building this culture.”
MARKET SNAPSHOT
Another company in the digital surgery space is Proximie, which allows surgeons to record procedures and lets outside surgeons virtually “scrub in.” The company also pitches its platform as a way to improve surgical quality. It raised $80 million last year and was recently chosen for Amazon Web Services’ latest healthcare accelerator.
PrecisionOS, which uses virtual reality for surgical training and planning, received FDA 510(k) clearance in late 2021 for its InVisionOS tool that creates a 3D construction of a patient’s CT scan that can be viewed or manipulated before the operation.
There are several companies that aim to use VR for surgical training and assessment. Osso VR raised $66 million last year, and FundamentalVR scooped up $20 million in 2022.