Healthcare
Here’s the 12-slide presentation that convinced Oak HC/FT and Tiger to bet on a virtual-reality startup to train surgeons
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- Osso VR creates virtual-reality surgeries to train physicians.
- Oak HC/FT, Tiger Global, and other VCs backed the startup in its $66 million Series C in March.
- Medical-device companies like Johnson & Johnson use Osso VR to teach surgeons to use their products.
Dr. Justin Barad had dreamed of being a video-game developer since he was little.
So after getting his medical degree, when he first tried virtual-reality technology for himself, he had a revelation.
“I immediately was like, I could train people to do surgery with this,” he said.
In 2016, Barad cofounded Osso VR, a platform that lets surgeons practice procedures in a virtual operating room without ever touching a patient.
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The San Francisco startup landed a $66 million Series C funding round in March led by Oak HC/FT, with participation from Tiger Global Management, GSR Ventures, SignalFire, and Kaiser Permanente Ventures. The round brought Osso VR’s total funding to $109 million.
Osso VR works with medical-device companies and residency programs to train physicians in new and old surgical techniques.
Besides giving the physician a hands-on learning experience, the platform tracks how well the provider completes the procedure, providing a more objective assessment than surgeons typically get, Barad said.
Osso VR even uses the virtual-reality tech internally both for work and for team building, Barad said.
He said he wants to “make healthcare technology more fun.”
“It doesn’t have to be so serious and so stale,” he said. “Even though the work is quite serious, helping people is pretty fun.”
Osso VR shared with Insider the presentation it used to bank $66 million in March. The slides were edited before Insider’s review to remove details about the startup’s financials, a company spokesperson said.
Here’s the 12-slide presentation Osso VR used to raise $66 million in Series C funding led by Oak HC/FT
Osso VR’s tech lets physicians practice surgical procedures in a virtual operating room.
Osso VR
The startup provides trainings to teach new surgical techniques and to refresh surgeons on long-used methods.
Osso VR
Barad said that surgical trainings aren’t standardized to assess a surgeon’s proficiency in performing procedures and that modern surgical techniques like minimally invasive surgeries have “a crazy steep learning curve.”
Osso VR
Barad said that during his residency in orthopedic surgery at UCLA, the other surgeons would sometimes ask him to Google what to do when they got stuck in the operating room.
Osso VR
Osso VR offers more than 200 surgical-training modules across specialties like orthopedics, neurovascular surgery, and robotics.
Osso VR
Barad said that by the end of the year the company plans to be developing 100 modules simultaneously.
Most of Osso VR’s revenue comes from companies that make medical devices, like Johnson & Johnson and Stryker. They use Osso VR to train surgeons to use their equipment, Barad said.
Osso VR
While Barad declined to offer further details about Osso VR’s contracts with the medical-device companies, he said the startup’s revenue scaled with the number of trainings a medical-device company conducts using the platform.
Osso VR
In a 2020 study, 75% of participants who trained to perform a given surgical procedure using Osso VR completed it, while 25% of participants who trained by reading traditional “technique guides” completed the procedure.
Osso VR
The study was published in Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research.
Barad said Osso VR assesses surgical proficiency based on three major criteria: whether the physician knows the steps of the procedure (or knows what to do when something goes wrong), how accurately they perform those steps, and how efficiently they move through the procedure.
Osso VR
Barad said 20 residency programs internationally are using Osso VR’s platform. The platform lets the surgeons-in-training learn to do procedures without putting patients at risk.
Osso VR
Osso VR offers team-based trainings in addition to individual trainings so surgeons in different countries can train together in a virtual operating room.
Osso VR
Osso VR says its platform is available in more than 20 countries and in eight languages.
Barad said the startup’s ultimate vision is for Osso VR’s trainings to be a mandatory part of certifying and recertifying surgeons.
Osso VR
“Our mission is to democratize access to surgical education to everyone, everywhere,” Barad said.