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LONDON/GERMANY – May 4th, 2020 – FundamentalVR, global pioneers in immersive medical education technology, is expanding its presence in Germany with the launch of a German-language version of its Fundamental Surgery training platform and deeper partnership with existing investor, Sana Kliniken AG, one of the largest hospital operators in the country.
Rummelsberg Hospital, a center of excellence in orthopaedic surgery, was the first facility in Germany to implement VR training at Sana, after it has been thoroughly validated also at other Sana locations. At the same time, Sana became a strategic investor in FundamentalVR in October 2019 as a participant in the company’s Series A funding round.
Today, FundamentalVR and Sana are deepening their partnership with Sana actively aiding in the rollout of the immersive medical education platform to German medical professionals, with the support of Sana’s procurement and logistics subsidiary (Sana Einkauf & Logistik GmbH). Sana, which to date has been utilizing the educational platform in several of its hospitals, will implement the platform across its entire hospital network as well as other medical institutions. This rollout will provide medical staff and procurement decision-makers with information on best practices to utilize and leverage FundamentalVR technology as well as invaluable insights to ensure their surgeons are continuing to master their skillsets.
“Since launching, we’ve partnered with several of the world’s leading teaching and medical institutions, including Mayo Clinic, NYU Langone, St George’s Hospital and Harvard University, to build our platform and support the medical community. We are excited to continue our work by expanding further into Germany with the help of our close partners Sana,” said Richard Vincent, CEO and co-founder, FundamentalVR. “The release of our platform in German will also allow us to better support our customers in Germany and our efforts to provide the best training simulations available around the world.”
As part of the company’s German expansion, Prof. Richard Stangl, medical director for orthopaedics and trauma at Rummelsberg Hospital, has joined the Fundamental Surgery Global Medical Panel and will be the lead of the VR training programme for junior doctors at Sana Group. As the first member to be based in Germany, he will advise the company on a range of academic, medical, and operational issues. Prof. Stangl is a specialist in in orthopaedic surgery and trauma and maintains a keen interest in physical therapy and sports medicine. He is also a professor at Friedrich Alexander University, where he lectures on trauma surgery.
“As a surgeon or student, having the ability to practice and hone skills at any time is imperative to learning and maintaining proficiency. Fundamental Surgery’s training offering is incomparable and brings so much value to the surgical community,” said Professor Stangl “I am proud to join the company’s Global Medical Panel and work with my peers to continue to develop more simulations.”
Fundamental Surgery launched in 2018 as the world’s first educational surgical software platform to use HapticVRTM to mimic the physical cues of surgical actions, medical tools and tissue variations, allowing surgeons to experience the same sights, sounds and feel they would in a real procedure. To provide surgeons and supervisors with even more opportunities to train and hone their skills, FundamentalVR expanded the Fundamental Surgery platform with the addition of a new education modality @HomeVR. For the first time, this expansion brings educational simulations accredited by medical professional bodies to standalone VR headsets such as Oculus Quest and HTC Vive Focus Plus.
Fundamental Surgery’s multimodal platform’s accompanying educational material provides real-time feedback to students and supervisors on every step of a simulated procedure. This material as well as the platform’s data dashboard, which tracks hundreds of data points to provide performance insights to students and course directors, are now available in both English and German languages.
Named as one of the best inventions of 2018 by Time magazine and 2019 winners of the SXSW Innovation Award for VR/AR & MR, Fundamental Surgery is deployed with medical institutions around the world, including Mayo Clinic and UCLA in the U.S., UCLH in the U.K. as well as Sana and Rummelsberg Hospital in Germany. It was created by a team of VR, haptic specialists and surgical training experts and can be seen in action here.
ABOUT SANA
Being one of the three largest hospital and health groups in Germany, Sana Kliniken AG is a group of world-class, award-winning private hospitals, outpatient and diagnostic centres spread across the country. Sana is owned by the 25 leading German private health insurance companies. Founded in 1976, Sana Hospital Group is one of the leading providers of state-of-art healthcare services in the world, focused on providing clinical excellence and superior patient outcomes. It is an integrated healthcare delivery system with 55 hospitals and over 34.000 employees serving more than 2.2 million patients annually.
