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Delivering on our mission with strategic partnerships.

Our strategic partnerships are delivering standardised surgical training at scale, across the globe.

Join us on our journey of remastering surgical training.

My recent presentation at KPMG’s Global Tech Innovator finals will give you a quick insight into our progress towards achieving our mission so far. If, after watching the video, you are interested in learning more, please reach out on email at the link below.

Dr Elliot Street
Co-Founder and CEO

Watch the video

Elliot Street at KPMG Finals

Email: Dr Elliot Street

Following the successful launch of the LapAR platform in 2020 and having positioned itself as the market leader for surgical training technologies in the United Kingdom, Inovus raised a $7million scale up round in 2022. The investment will be utilised to expand direct commercial operations across North America and accelerate new product development. The round was led by a majority investment from Norgine Ventures. 

Norgine Ventures is backed by Norgine, a private, European healthcare company with 116 years of experience in the pharma space. Norgine Ventures was started in 2012 to diversify Norgine’s activities and foster innovation in the healthcare sector. Norgine Ventures provides debt and debt-like financing to innovative, fast-growing companies in the fields of healthcare and life sciences, in Europe and the US. To date, Norgine Ventures has invested in over twenty businesses, including specialty pharma, diagnostic and medical device companies, at various stages of their life cycle. 

For further information visit  https://www.norgineventures.com/ 

With strong foundations laid and major growth opportunities in the domestic and international markets, the company welcomed its first equity investors onto its journey to help capitalise on the opportunities in the market. In late 2018, Mercia Asset Management invested through the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund as part of a £700,000 round. 

The growth capital has allowed the company to strengthen its domestic commercial team and make important strides in overseas markets. Mercia is a proactive specialist asset manager with a focus on regional businesses seeking venture, private equity or debt finance to scale their businesses. Mercia has c.£800million of assets under management with just under half being unrestricted free cash to invest over the next two to five years. Mercia continue to support the ambitious growth plans of the company.

With the landscape of surgical care changing, NHS England and the SBRI Healthcare team highlighted the need for improved pre-operative surgical simulation, the subject of their Autumn 2017 funding call. Inovus were successful in phase one and phase two funding, receiving £1.1million in total. The SBRI Healthcare funding accelerated the development of the company’s ground-breaking high fidelity laparoscopic simulation platform, LapAR. 

The LapAR combines a unique approach to Augmented Reality with computer vision tracking and artificial intelligence to deliver connected surgical training at scale. The technology has been shown to save healthcare systems over $115 million per year in operative efficiencies. LapAR was launched in the summer of 2020 following the successful completion of the SBRI phase 2 project and is already in use in the NHS and overseas territories including North America and Asia Pacific.

Innovate UK

Innovate UK is part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the national funding agency investing in science and research in the UK. Operating across the whole of the UK with a combined budget of more than £6 billion, UKRI brings together the 7 Research Councils, Innovate UK and Research England. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Innovate UK offered £10 million to fund projects focussed on sustainable economic recovery from COVID-19. 

Inovus were lucky enough to receive this funding as part of the Sustainable Innovation Fund. The company is running a project that aims to help re-skill surgeons who have been affected by disruption to normal services from the pandemic.

Inovus have been supported through a number of investments originating from the British Business Bank including investments via the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund by Mercia and MSIF.

The British Business Bank is a government-owned business development bank dedicated to making finance markets work better for smaller businesses across the UK, they exist to help businesses overcome challenges, make the most of opportunities and keep moving in the right direction.

Having developed a late stage prototype for the bozzini Hysteroscopy simulator, Inovus were seeking funding to accelerate the product to market readiness in 2018. The company were supported in an application to the EIT Health Headstart programme by the local Academic Health Science Network, the Innovation Agency. 

Following a successful application to the programme, Inovus were one of 10 companies to be awarded a share of 500,000 Euros. The funding accelerated the final development stages of the bozzini Hysteroscopy simulator which has been a major success since its launch, now used across four continents for hysteroscopy skills training.

Having outgrown three premises in the space of four years, 2017 saw the need for the company to move again. With Inovus’ growth continuing to accelerate the company also needed to upscale its manufacturing processes and fulfilment infrastructure. Through the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund, MSIF were able to support a £240,000 manufacturing scale up project that enabled the company to keep pace with its ever accelerating growth.

Having successfully implemented the use of additive manufacturing in the production of many of its products, the company was keen to scale these manufacturing modalities by bringing many of them in house. In 2019 Inovus took on an ambitious project to in house production level 3D printing. The 3D printing technology (SLS) allows the company to manufacture precision parts at scale. The project included the purchase and installation of a ProX6100 printer from 3D Systems as well as the installation of post processing equipment and new manufacturing lines.

The £250,000 project was match funded through the KEEP+ programme. The KEEP+ funding drastically accelerated the project delivery timelines, allowing Inovus to keep up with the growing demands for its products.

By in housing the technology the company has been able to reduce its printing costs. Passing these cost savings onto its customers whilst manufacturing the highest quality parts is enabling Inovus to deliver on its values of affordable and functional surgical training.

The Future Innovation Fund was launched by the Liverpool Metro Mayor in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The £3million Fund was established to support Liverpool City Region’s (LCR) small and medium sized enterprise (SME) community with an aim to incentivise SMEs to innovate, adapt and diversify in response to or in spite of the challenges and opportunities presented by the pandemic and its associated impacts on the economy and society. 

Inovus were one of only 5% of applicants to be awarded funding in the first round and will be using the funding to drive internationalisation in North America. The funding also supported the installation of new capital equipment to help service the demand from growing export sales.

The Department of International Trade have been supporting Inovus’ export journey since 2015. The company has been the beneficiary of a number of export grants which have supported direct market access activities. The DIT export grants have enabled Inovus to explore new markets including North America and the Middle East. On-going support from DIT is focussed on the company’s key growth markets of North America, Asia Pacific and Europe.