Dive Brief:

• Medtronic has bought surgical instrument developer Fortimedix Surgical, the acquired company said Thursday in a LinkedIn post.
• Fortimedix has designed articulating instruments to be flexible, robust and responsive enough to navigate through the body and enable endoscopic and minimally invasive procedures. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed in Fortimedix’s announcement.
• Fortimedix said in 2023 that it was “working with a number of companies that develop surgical robots.” Medtronic, which is developing a soft tissue robot, did not immediately respond to requests for information on the acquisition.

Dive Insight:

Fortimedix has kept a low profile in recent years. The Dutch medtech company put out a series of press releases in 2016 and 2017, when it raised 11 million euros, received a CE mark and launched a single-port Symphonx surgery system in the U.S.

Physicians published a paper in 2020 about the learning curve for new users of the surgery system. The Symphonx system enables minimally invasive abdominal laparoscopic surgery. 

The focus of Fortimedix’s website shifted away from Symphonx around one year ago. Having featured the surgical system prominently through October 2023, Fortimedix then refocused its website on the use of its articulating instruments in endoscopic, minimally invasive and endoluminal surgeries. 

Talking to a patent attorney in 2023, Fortimedix CEO Wout Bijker discussed how the instruments could make non-invasive surgeries viable. Rather than inserting instruments via an incision, the surgeon would use natural openings such as the mouth. Bijker discussed how a non-invasive approach could improve the treatment of esophageal cancer.

“[Traditional surgery] requires entry into the patient from two or three points, causing a lot of trauma. With our instrument none of this is needed. We enter via the mouth and throat to get to the right spot where we can perform all the necessary actions,” Bijker said. “The use of our surgical instrument would therefore result in much reduced risks of complications and much shorter recovery times.”

Bijker said Fortimedix was working on the instruments with the developers of surgical robots, which are needed to operate the articulating devices. The plan at that time was for the development partners to become customers. Now, Fortimedix has been acquired by a developer of surgical robots.

Medtronic is aiming to file for U.S. approval of its Hugo soft tissue robot in urology procedures in the first quarter of 2025.

Medtronic CEO Geoff Martha shared the filing timeline on the company’s second-quarter earnings call earlier this week. Martha also used the call to discuss the company’s decision to increase its focus on tuck-in acquisitions and how the team will identify targets. Medtronic is taking a top-down approach to target identification, the CEO said, with the leadership team focusing on its priority areas.

Martha declined to name specific areas of interest but said the focus is on high-growth markets, as well as on some of Medtronic’s well-established businesses that “need some tuck-in support to keep them going.” Medtronic will look to strike deals in areas when it expects a business to provide “a disproportionate amount of profits and cash flow.”