Norwegian healthtech startup HoloCare scales its commercial footprint across the UK and Europe, following UKCA and CE certification. The mixed reality and AI-powered platform will initially launch in five hospitals, including Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, to support pre-surgical planning.
HoloCare’s software creates interactive 3D holograms of an individual patient’s organ, allowing surgeons to precisely plan and personalise surgeries to the patient’s unique anatomy. This better spatial understanding could support surgeons to carry out operations more efficiently and accurately – helping improve wait times, improve patient surgery outcomes, and improve clinician wellbeing.
The technology will initially be available to improve the quality of planning for complex liver surgery (liver resections) – where part of the liver tissue is removed – which is commonly used in the treatment of liver cancer (19% of UK treatments) and bowel cancer (26.1% of UK treatments).
Professor Peter Lodge, a consultant surgeon based at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, and internationally renowned for his work in liver surgery, will be chairing a new clinical advisory board for HoloCare, an important part of clinical regulation. The team at Leeds will soon be training with the new technology and reporting back the potential impact on patient care as part of a new evaluation. He said:
“We fully expect this exciting new advance to make decision making for liver surgery and other liver cancer therapies easier, more accurate and faster. We are looking forward to helping HoloCare take liver radiology forward in a way we have not thought is possible until recently. We can see wide implications for all types of liver surgery and interventions, saving time and money in patient care.”
The company’s newly UKCA and CE marked (Class 2b) technology – which means the company has been assessed to meet high safety, health, and environmental protection requirements, and can now trade in the UK and the European Economic Area (EEA) – is launching at five UK and European hospitals, including Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, UK and Oslo University Hospital, Norway.
The company plans to launch in a further 10 European hospitals in 2024.
In order to gain CE mark approval, HoloCare has completed clinical research in collaboration with Oslo University Hospital to assess the outcomes of its technology in a clinical setting. The results of this research will be published soon.
Professor Bjørn Edwin, Section Manager and Professor at the Intervention Centre, Oslo University Hospital where he specialises in liver and pancreas surgeries, has been using HoloCare’s software as part of the clinical research study:
“As a surgeon specialising in minimally invasive surgery, HoloCare’s software has transformed the way I approach operations. I’m able to zoom in on the intricacies of a patient’s anatomy, to plan exactly how I will approach a surgery in the most efficient (and least invasive) way. I’ve worked closely with HoloCare’s team to really test the technology to its limits, and have seen promising results.”
Alison Sundset, CEO of HoloCare says:
“This CE Mark is an important moment for HoloCare, signalling confidence (as well as compliance) in our solution and setting the scene for an exciting next chapter, as we look to scale across Europe – and ultimately beyond! I’m very proud to be partnering with incredible hospitals and research partners in our mission to advance medical imaging, and improve patient outcomes in surgery.”
