Inovus Medical is a UK-based, multi-award winning designer and manufacturer of surgical training technologies. The company was founded in 2012 by two university friends, Elliot Street (a medic) and Jordan Van Flute (an engineer), who saw an opportunity to improve the way surgeons were trained, and designed their first ‘take home’ simulator in their university bedrooms. Since then, the company has earned worldwide recognition and its innovative products are transforming the way surgeons are trained.
When we spoke to Elliot Street in 2022, the company was just launching its innovative digital surgery platform called Totum. A lot more has happened since then, as Inovus has expanded both from the commercial and operational perspectives.
Expanded footprint
Last year, the company achieved a major milestone entering into partnership with two entities – the American Association of Gynaecologic Laparoscopists (AAGL) for the manufacturing and delivery of the equipment for the Essentials in Minimally Invasive Gynaecologic Surgery (EMIGS) programme, and Hologic, an American medical technology company primarily focused on women’s health.
“This partnership has brought together three entities to deliver standardized training and testing to gynaecologists across America,” says Street. “Hologic has invested a considerable amount into our laparoscopic and hysteroscopy simulators and facilitated the implementation of those simulators in every single gynaecology residency programme in America. That’s roughly 300 residency programmes. “
In addition, the company’s digital surgery platform Totum will be used to deliver remote, digitised testing of surgeons, a paradigm shifting opportunity to improve access to mandated training and testing.
This impressive achievement has led to major operational changes for the business, as the company expanded from one to three operational sites. In December 2023, Inovus announced the opening of its US headquarters in Tampa Bay, Florida to support its growing business in America, and earlier this year, its new global headquarters in St Helens was opened, which is now the focal point for Inovus Medical’s rapidly expanding Research and Development (R&D) and UK-based commercial teams.
“Over the last year, we have doubled the headcount of the US business with a dedicated implementation team. As a result, the number of surgeons operating with TOTUM has increased dramatically. In just the last six months, over 4,000 users have been added to the platform” says Street.
AI in medicine
He further highlights the transformative impact of Totum on the medical sector. “The data sets in the clinical environment are actually very small. Our technology is not virtual – we use real instruments operating on synthetic tissues.”
“As we have digitised that process with Totum, the data that we capture on instrument handling, i.e. how the surgeons hold the scope, how they move the instruments, how they operate on the tissues, all the decisions, all of that data that is collected in our simulated environment is highly reciprocal to real-life data. This is something you can’t say for virtual-based simulations. What that means for us as a business is that we have a major opportunity as a company downstream in AI and machine learning in surgery.”
“The potential application of our technology in surgical AI is very exciting for us as a business. We’re generating thousands and thousands of data points for various surgeries where we’re not limited by the number of patients available to operate on so we have considerably larger data sets to train models on compared to those collecting data in the clinical environment only.”
The worldwide potential for Inovus’s products is obviously huge and at the moment, there is no other company offering a similar hybrid solution. Street says that the company is set to continue its ambitious journey: “Our intention is to repeat that deployment across every speciality and every procedure globally.”
Inovus’s technology is priced at a point where that is actually possible. “In America, we are Installing 1,000 simulators at roughly 300 sites and the reason we can do this on such big scale is that our technology is so much more affordable. As such, we can replicate the same model not only in Europe but also in the developing world, where 5 billion people don’t have access to safe surgery yet. With our technology they will.”
Leading the way
Looking back, he admits that the complementary professional combination of the two founders was critical for the business but the success could not have been achieved in isolation. “The most important thing has been attracting amazing team members. We could never do it alone.”
Clearly, more is to come for Inovus Medical. Last year, the company increased revenues by over 125% and is constantly evolving and improving its products. Earlier this year, the company launched the second generation HystAR Pro and LapAR Pro simulators, with enhanced features designed to provide unparalleled simulations for healthcare professionals.
How does it feel to achieve such incredible development in just a little over ten years, starting from zero? “Naturally, I’m very proud,” says Street. “As a physician by training I love looking after patients. It was a difficult decision to step out of that environment and I miss it very much.”
“However, seeing the impact our business has is very rewarding – I could look after just one patient at a time in the hospital. Our partnership with AAGL and Hologic should positively impact 48 million women a year in America. We’re incredibly proud of that, but we have barely scratched the surface. We have so much left to do, and we don’t let our success distract us.”
“Commercial success is not everything to us, though. What we are also really proud of is our impact on our community. We just announced that we’ve secured a million pounds worth of funding from the Liverpool City region and the Liverpool City Innovation zone for a programme focused on life science skills development. The brilliant minds of our business will coach and mentor the young people of St Helens and the wider city region, to train and inspire the next generation,” he reflects in concluding.
