Tel Aviv-based medtech startup raises €15.1M, unveils enteral feeding tube ‘GPS’ tech

Each year, millions of patients worldwide are placed on a feeding tube for a variety of medical cases, but many of them are not placed with any sort of technical guidance. This blind placement can lead to life-threatening conditions like pneumothorax, pneumonia, or even death. 

€15.1M funding, partnership with private hospital networks

In this case, Tel Aviv-based startup Envizion is working together with various hospitals to minimise error and maximise enteral procedure efficiency. Recently, the company has raised $18 million (approx €15.1 million) in investment led by private medtech backers, family offices, and the Technion Venture Capital fund.

Furthermore, the Israeli startup is partnering with one of the largest private hospital networks in the U.S., with more than one hundred hospitals, to provide Envizion’s feeding tube placement navigation devices nationwide.

ENVue – Navigation device

With this agreement, the hospital network can now use ENvizion’s navigation device – ENVue. As per the company claims, this device can cut the usual placement procedure time in half, using electromagnetic mapping to guide medical-support staff in placing the tube from the nasal cavity down the esophagus, and all the way through to the small intestine.

To ensure correct placements, the ENVue device provides guidance through a number of technical mechanisms including Patient body mapping, Multi-faceted view of the patient’s body, and directional guidance. Combined, the three different mechanisms provide a significant layer of confidence to medical-support staff in patient care, minimising the potentially fatal results of a blind placement and accelerating the procedure time itself for better staff resource allocation.

“We are very excited about the opportunity our work with these hospitals can bring to the U.S.,” says ENvizion President & CEO Doron Besser, MD. “The potential for our navigation technology to both greatly reduce detrimental placements and cut down the time required to place tubes will help clinicians perform the task much more confidently and efficiently.”

Main image credits: Envizion