Cost, image quality, portability, software constraints, and the inability to image denser body compositions have all limited the dramatic impact that critical diagnostic tools like ultrasound can have on global health and patient care.
FREMONT, CA: Redwood City-based manufacturer of handheld medical imaging devices, Exo, raised USD 40 million in a Series B investment round led by Fiscus Ventures, Reimagined Ventures, and Action Potential Ventures. Proceeds from the investment round will be used by the company to expand operations and its development efforts. The investment round will fund research and product development on a revolutionary handheld medical device and cloud-based workflow software platform.
“Emergency room physicians around the world are often tasked with solving some of the most urgent healthcare problems — COVID-19 diagnosis and complications, cardiac emergencies, internal bleeding — without being able to see clearly into a patient they only have minutes to diagnose and treat,” said Exo CEO Sandeep Akkaraju. “Exo plans to give these critical frontline heroes the device they need — one that immediately opens up a window into every body and enables them to make speedy, accurate and often life-saving medical decisions on the spot.”
Medical imaging technology has been lagging far behind the requirements of today’s emergency room physicians and the expectations of healthcare patients. Cost, image quality, portability, software constraints, and the inability to image denser body compositions have all limited the dramatic impact that critical diagnostic tools like ultrasound can have on global health and patient care.
“As both an emergency room physician and a venture capitalist, I know firsthand the transformative potential of the products that Exo is bringing to market,” said Dr. Ted Koutouzis of Fiscus and Reimagined Ventures, who also works as an emergency room doctor at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. “The Exo team is focused on building a device that works seamlessly within the often chaotic and urgent environment of a hospital, and delivers the image quality, clean interface, and diagnostic tools that doctors have dreamed about having in the palm of our hands. These devices coupled with the Exo enterprise software solution should begin to allow us to change the clinical paradigm of emergency medicine ultrasound.”
Exo will leverage the funds to bring its data and workflow applications to market and finish product development of its handheld ultrasound device. The investment round comes at an essential time of the COVID-19 pandemic that has overloaded hospital resources and created an urgent need for innovative imaging technology to be more widely accessible by frontline workers. The investment round was also participated by TDK Ventures, Solasta Ventures and all previous investors, including Intel Capital, Applied Ventures, Bold Capital, Creative Ventures, Longevity Vision Fund, Fiscus and Reimagined Ventures, Nautilus Venture Partners, OSF Healthcare, Rising Tide Fund, Innovation Growth Ventures, and Wanxiang Healthcare Investments.
