Using virtual reality to improve patient care

OTTAWA – Realize Medical is collaborating with Logitech to further enhance Elucis, the world’s first VR platform for creating patient-specific 3D medical models directly in virtual reality. The partnership will bring Logitech’s VR Ink Pilot Edition to the platform, enabling users to draw precisely and directly in the Elucis platform.

Elucis allows users to turn medical images into 3D medical models for 3D printing and other advanced visualization applications. The platform, in combination with the Logitech stylus, enables intuitive medical image viewing and modeling.

“We are constantly on the lookout for innovative ways to improve our Elucis platform, and this partnership with Logitech does just that,” said Justin Sutherland, CEO and co-founder of Realize Medical. “Giving users the ability to draw seamlessly within our program will greatly improve the user experience, bringing us closer to meeting our mission of providing healthcare professionals with the 3D modeling tools they need to improve patient care and education.”

Virtual reality can play a variety of important roles in healthcare and medicine. The Elucis platform in particular can act as a clinician education and training tool, help with patient-specific planning, and has the potential to guide treatment decisions. Realize Medical believes that conventional monitor displays will be replaced by modern mixed reality tools like VR, AR, and medical 3D printing. Elucis can accelerate this change by providing surgeons and healthcare professionals with a radically new way to create 3D medical content.

The new era of VR platforms is going to be game changing for healthcare and medicine. Realize Medical is proud to be part of that innovative category and hopes their partnership with Logitech will help bring positive change to the industry.

Sutherland told the Ottawa Business Journals that the deal with computer peripherals and software giant Logitech will see Realize Medical’s customers use its styluses to help draw 3D images.

“It was the perfect fit because we were hoping we wouldn’t have to produce these pens,” Sutherland explained.

Although the company’s products are still in the pre-trial phase, Sutherland says Realize Medical is hoping to get regulatory approval to sell its products to clinics in Canada and the United States by the middle of 2021. The tech is now being beta-tested at a handful of hospitals and post-secondary schools, including Toronto’s prestigious Michener Institute of Education.

Currently fuelled by about $270,000 from a recent friends-and-family round, Realize Medical is aiming to land more seed funding this fall. The founders are casting a wide net, seeking investors in Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal, New York, Boston and other East Coast cities.

Sutherland says the firm hopes to use the future funding to continue to develop its technology, which he believes will soon allow an expert in Toronto, for example, to help demonstrate a delicate operation to a surgeon in the Far North by sharing the same virtual headspace inside a 3D model.

“I have a lot of ideas for where we want to take this,” said Sutherland, who founded the startup last year with fellow clinician Dan La Russa and lawyer Morgan Jarvis.

About Realize Medical
Realize Medical is the creator of Elucis, the first platform for building 3D medical models based entirely in virtual reality. Elucis makes it effortless to turn medical images into 3D models for medical 3D printing or use in mixed reality systems. The platform’s medical image viewing, modeling and communication platform combines novel 3D visualizations with the familiar and intuitive input of a hand-held stylus on a writing surface. Realize Medical was founded by medical physicists at The Ottawa Hospital and the University of Ottawa in Canada.

Visit https://www.logitech.com/en-roeu/promo/vr-ink.html to learn more about Logitech and their VR Ink Pilot.