Robotic and digital surgery company Ronovo Surgical has announced the successful closing of a new funding round to accelerate the adoption of its cross-specialty robotic-assisted surgery (RAS).
The latest round brings the company’s total capital raised to date to US$50m (£41.4m) since 2020, with investors including LongRiver Investments, Lilly Asia Ventures, Vivo Capital, Matrix Partners China and GGV Capital.
Ronovo’s modular surgical system Carina is designed to enable configurable robotic assistance for laparoscopic surgeries across multiple specialties.
According to Ronovo, this round of financing was oversubscribed and will support its acceleration of a multi-disciplinary clinical trial for Carina, while also strengthening its R&D and clinical applications development and help the firm grow its talent base.
Developed in collaboration with Chinese laparoscopic surgeons, Carina was designed to address a range of challenges associated with minimally invasive surgeries (MIS).
The system was designed to provide surgeons with the flexibility to choose the instruments and the anatomical access point based on laparoscopy foundation.
Ronovo claims Carina’s architecture minimises equipment footprint to maximise utilisation of precious operating room (OR) space, which its develop claims makes it more adaptable to typical OR environments in China.
The surgical team can choose between three-module or four-module configuration, depending on the expected complexity of the procedure, and the individual modules are reportedly freely mobile to join others as needed in different ORs.
Surgeons can also choose from a full suite of instruments to arm each module.
“We are extremely grateful to our investors for their confidence in Ronovo’s strategy to democratise robotic surgery,” said Dr. John Ma, founder, chairman and CEO of Ronovo.
“From inception, we have stayed true to our belief that innovation must start from an original pursuit to solve actual unmet clinical needs.”
“Carina is designed with modular architecture to overcome the limited adoption of robotic MIS beyond urology,” said Dr. Ying Mao, co-founder and CTO of Ronovo.
“Thanks to the ingenuity and expertise of our talented team, we have achieved a breakthrough in our core robotic technology for the Carina platform.”
