Medtech start-up IMRA cap raises to expand realistic human models for robotic surgery training

A medtech start-up that raised $6m is tapping investors again to expand its hyper-realistic human models that allow surgeons to be trained for a fraction of the cost.

IMRA chief executive Adam Clark with one of the company's hyper-real surgical models.

Tony Costello envisions a world where animals don’t need to be slaughtered or dead bodies used to train surgeons, developing new technology in Melbourne that can do the same job for a fraction of the cost.

Professor Costello founded IMRA – a medtech start-up that has developed hyper-realistic surgical models – in 2021 and has already signed-on clients, including Medtronic, Johnson & Johnson, Olympus and Intuitive Surgical.

He is now seeking to raise $6m to accelerate IMRA’s growth, working with Wilsons Advisory, giving it a pre-money valuation of about $25m. It is expecting its products to soar in demand as robotic surgery becomes more mainstream and needs crucial training.

For example, Intuitive Surgical’s revenue soared 17 per cent to $US8.35bn ($12.85bn) last year. At the same time the powerful US Food and Drug Administration plans to phase out animal testing in the next three to five years, declaring it will become the “exception rather than the norm”.

Professor Tony Costello founded IMRA in 2021.

IMRA chief executive Adam Clark said not only were millions of animals slaughtered each year, they were also expensive to procure.

He said pigs can cost $5000 each for surgical training, while a cadaver can cost $10,000. But IMRA’s models can cost as little as $75 and as much as $1500.

“So dollar for dollar, it’s a much more cost effective way for surgeons to learn,” Mr Clark said.

“It’s also convenient because you can train surgeons where they are.”

Crucially, he said IMRAs models can be designed to emulate a range of different conditions, allowing more precise training than a cadaver or an animal.

“If you think about the real world, if I am a hospital, a training hospital, Royal Melbourne, and I’m ordering five cadavers for a day of surgical training … let’s say I’m teaching hysterectomy training. Three of the cadavers might show up with no uterus,” Mr Clark said.

“So how do I practice on removing the uterus when the uterus was already removed 40 years ago in real life, when the patient was still living. This is a real challenge with cadavers.

“An older person might have a different type of pathology or anatomy than a younger person. If the training surgeon wants something that feels different for they want to practice on we can create that kind of tissue. We just get their specifications. We figure out what does that tissue need to feel like? What does it need to look like?”

IMRA has also designed an artificial intelligence-powered algorithm with the CSIRO and RMIT to measure a surgeon’s skill.

“Just like in aviation, you can give real objective feedback to a surgeon and a surgical learner and say something like ‘you’re 80 per cent as good as your peers with this part of the procedure. You’re 100 per cent as good as other surgeons, expert surgeons in this area’.

“We think that’ll really change clinical outcomes in the long-term. And it can be done anywhere. Synthetic models can be used in an operating theatre. You could do it in Geelong, you don’t need to come up to Melbourne to do it.”

In April the FDA said it phasing out animal testing, taking a “groundbreaking step to advance public health”. FDA Commissioner Martin Makary said animals would be replaced in the development of monoclonal antibody therapies and other drugs with more effective, human-relevant methods.

“For too long, drug manufacturers have performed additional animal testing of drugs that have data in broad human use internationally,’ Dr Makary said.

“This initiative marks a paradigm shift in drug evaluation and holds promise to accelerate cures and meaningful treatments.

“By leveraging AI-based computational modelling, human organ model-based lab testing, and real-world human data, we can get safer treatments to patients faster and more reliably, while also reducing R&D costs and drug prices. It is a win-win for public health and ethics.”