Osso VR Awarded More Than $200,000 from the National Science Foundation to Advance its Surgical Skill Assessment Platform
Leading VR-based surgical training platform using NSF’s Small Business Innovation Research Program funding to implement automation technology into surgeon assessment tool
PALO ALTO, Calif., Feb. 6, 2019 – Osso VR, a validated virtual reality (VR) surgical training platform, announces today it has received $222,596 from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for research and development to advance the company’s surgical assessment platform using automation and artificial intelligence technology. Assessing technical skill in VR has the potential to significantly improve patient outcomes by highlighting a surgeon’s procedural mastery, or lack thereof, after completing each of Osso VR’s training modules.
The company’s scientifically validated training platform is designed for surgeons, sales teams and other trainees to address complexities in learning common procedures and to use new medical devices by providing realistic, haptic-enhanced interactions in an immersive training environment that is repeatable. Currently, there is no standard in place for surgeons to adopt new technologies, leaving the process up to hospital discretion. This has also become an important focus for the FDA, as it looks to understand how devices perform in the real world after approval.
“We’re continuing to refine the assessment capabilities of our training tools, which provide a ‘score’ after the completion of each module based on a surgeon’s mastery of steps, precision and efficiency,” said Justin Barad, MD and CEO of Osso VR. “Having a validated, objective and scalable assessment tool is a critical component of surgical safety, as it is has been proven that a surgeon’s skill is directly correlated with patient outcomes. This grant indicates growing support for solving one of medicine’s greatest challenges that will safely provide patients with the highest value procedures and technologies available to them.”