CHAPEL HILL – KindHeart, a surgery simulation startup, has raised $569,000 in debt, according to a recent SEC filing.
This is addition to $38,962 raised in debt in January 2018.
Fourteen investors contributed to the round
The filing indicated the use of proceeds would go towards “the payments of salary in the ordinary course of business.”
The round is capped at $1 million with $392,481 remaining to be sold.
Based out of Chapel Hill, KindHeart was founded in 2011 based on technology developed using a real pig heart for a complete cardiac surgery simulation.
A very detailed study
According to its website, Dr. Paul Ramphal built the simulator to provide his students clinical-level instruction at University of the West Indies to compensate for low patient flow.
KindHeart co-founder, Dr. Richard Feins, Professor of Surgery at UNC Chapel Hill and then Chairman of the American Board of Thoracic Surgery, collaborated with Dr. Ramphal to develop the first simulators for academic institutions.
Kindheart’s simulators were made in limited quantities in late 2015 and fully commercialized in 2016.
Today, KindHeart systems deliver unprecedented value by providing a realistic demonstration environment for abdominal, thoracic, and cardiac surgical procedures.
“As opposed to cadavers, live animals, or live humans, our proprietary platform is predictable, flexible, and scalable,” it says. “It is easy to simulate adverse conditions surgeons might encounter during operations, rectify mistakes and pause during a simulated procedure. The immersive nature of real tissue, natural movement, bleeding and other cues from a surgical environment provides doctors with a much richer experience vs. virtual reality or static simulation”.
Also published on Medium.