Meio CadiNav Medical (梅奥心磁), a surgical robot startup, has completed a Series A+ round of funding for an undisclosed amount of money, PE Daily, a VC/PE-focused media outlet reported today.
The round was led by SciNova Venture and came little more than half a year after the Shaoxing-based startup closed a Series A funding round in February this year, backed exclusively by Shaoxing Yuecheng City Development Corporation.
According to Cheng Yuemeng, following the latest fundraise, Meio will accelerate the clinical registration for its TITIAN cardiac electrophysiological (EP) invasive surgical system.
Meanwhile, the firm will also foster the R&D development of various assistive robotic surgical products as well as increase its tech advantages in the domain of cardiac invasive surgeries.
Founded in 2018 and headquartered in Shaoxing of eastern China’s Zhejiang, Meio is committed to developing state-of-the-art cardiac invasive assistive systems.
Its product pipelines include TITIAN, a cardiac electrophysical invasive surgical robot, MANTEGNA, a left atrial appendage closure surgical tool, and RAPHAELLO, an interventional cardiovascular flexible magnetic surgical device.
Meio’s products are built upon self-developed cardiac surgical navigation technology, an energy-based ablation platform and flexible invasive consumables. They aim to provide cardiac EP and surgical solutions for the treatment of structural heart diseases.
In March this year, Meio’s TITIAN cardiac EP invasive surgical system began to be screened by the National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) for a certificate.
Shorten the learning cycle
TITIAN is the world’s first double-arm EP robotic system that allows doctors to perform tele-surgical procedures on fibrous sheaths, cardiac arrhythmia, among other heart disorders, the company claims.
In addition to bolstering surgical accuracy and stability, another benefit of TITIAN is that it will considerably shorten the learning cycle for doctors to master complex EP 3D invasive surgeries.
Chinese hospitals carry out about 100,000 operations every year to treat patients with atrial fibrillation.
This number is way smaller than the penetration of similar robot-assisted surgeries in Western nations, statistics say.
But as the country rapidly ages, doctors in China are expected to perform over 1 million atrial fibrillation-related surgeries in 2035.
Here lies the crux of the problem — China has fewer doctors than needed to treat a legion of patients, said Chen of Meio.
He added the domination by overseas imports of China’s medical equipment market has prompted domestic medtech suppliers to play catch-up aggressively.
Meio is one of them. Its mission statement is to build an innovative surgical platform for cardiac invasive surgeries, to help more doctors handle these procedures in a more effective and safer mannner.
