Dive Brief:
- CMR Surgical made its first sale of its robotic system for minimal access surgery, the U.K. company said Wednesday, almost a month after announcing a $240 million private financing round it claims is the largest in a European medtech's history.
- Dubbed Versius, the robot will likely compete with market creator Intuitive Surgical's da Vinci system, and a few years down the line, a system from Medtronic. CMR is on track to announce several more deals with European hospitals in the coming weeks, CEO Martin Frost told MedTech Dive Wednesday.
- With the commercial launch, the company is initiating a clinical registry for Versius to track operative time, length of stay, return to hospital within 30 days, and return to operating room within 24 hours.
Dive Insight:
CMR has officially entered what it says could be a $20 billion market by 2025 with a product it designed to be more portable and cost effective than currently available da Vinci systems.
"We don't see ourselves winning at the expense of existing incumbents in the market," Frost said. "We see our job as expanding the market in the U.K., Europe and, ultimately, [the U.S.] and Asia."
The recently raised $240 million will be put toward the global commercialization of Versius and will support "continued research and development, manufacturing and expansion," the company said in September. CMR currently employs roughly 400 people and plans to grow its workforce to 1,000 in the next two to three years.
Those funds followed a $100 million Series B round announced in June 2018, which it said would, in part, support validation studies supporting regulatory approvals in Europe and the U.S. Versius received a CE mark in March and filed a submission with FDA this spring, Frost said.
The company said Wednesday that Galaxy Care Hospital, a laparoscopic surgery center in Pune, India, is the first institution to buy a Versius system, and has already carried out hysterectomies and myomectomies with the technology. CMR's plans for postmarket surveillance center around "the world's first clinical registry for a surgical robotic system."
The milestone for CMR comes weeks after Medtronic unveiled an in-development robotic system being designed for thoracic, colorectal and bariatric surgeries, among other specialties. The Medtronic technology, like Versius, features a modular, portable design.
"We have significant demand for the system and it's great to be able to start to fill that demand before [Medtronic's] Hugo is commercially released," Frost said.
