Invest Nebraska completes financing in Virtual Incision
February 8, 2013 by Nebraska Entrepreneur
Filed under News
Invest Nebraska Corp. announced today the closing of financing in Virtual Incision, a Nebraska medical device company. The investment was completed in conjunction with Prairie Gold Venture Partners and Bluestem Capital, both of Sioux Falls, S.D. Terms of the investment have not been disclosed. The capital will be used to accelerate the development of Virtual Incision’s current prototype and as working capital.
Virtual Incision is developing an in vivo (inside the body) robotic surgical device. The patented robot performs minimally invasive, single-incision abdominal surgery using no specialized infrastructure. The initial application of the technology will be colon resection procedures.
“Virtual Incision welcomes this endorsement by Invest Nebraska, along with the continuing support of our other financial partners,” said Shane Farritor, Virtual Incision’s co-founder and chief technology officer. “Our device is poised to dramatically improve several procedures by enabling a minimally invasive technique for several procedures that are currently performed with an open incision. No one else is performing surgery from within the body.”
“The market opportunity for a novel, non-invasive surgical robot like Virtual Incision’s is extremely attractive,” said Mark Crawford, CEO and investment manager of Invest Nebraska. “The team at Virtual Incision has done an impressive job developing the technology, and we are proud to help advance this promising company.”
Invest Nebraska is a Nebraska-based venture capital organization focused on advising and investing in technology and high-growth companies. It is partially funded by the Nebraska Department of Economic Development through the Talent and Innovation Initiative.
Founded in 2006 by two University of Nebraska professors — Farritor, a mechanical engineer, and Dmitry Oleynikov, a surgeon — Virtual Incision is developing surgical robots using technology exclusively licensed from the University of Nebraska. The technology uses several existing tools and techniques already familiar to surgeons, and the Virtual Incision platform will be much less expensive than existing robotic alternatives.
