VitalMedicals takes $925,000 for doctors’ smart glasses apps

A growing number of startups are working on streaming clinical information and communications tools to glasses worn by surgeons. Think Droiders, Atheer Labs, Augmedix, Pristine, and Avinent.

One of the more mature solutions we’ve seen comes from San Francisco-based VitalMedicals. The startup is part of the StartX accelerator’s class of Fall 2014, and is participating in StartX’s Demo Day in Palo Alto, California today.

The company is announcing that it has raised $925,000 in seed funding from angel investors and the Stanford StartX Fund. VitalMedicals says it will use the funding to grow its technical team to continue building its smart glasses technologies.

It will also use the money to expand its pilot programs beyond the existing ones under way at El Camino Hospital and the Palo Alto Veterans Association Medical Center.

VitalMedicals currently offers three mobile- and smart glasses-enabled products for use in hospitals:

• VitalVideo streams live ultrasound, fluoroscopy, and endoscopy video to smart glasses and tablets during procedures, bringing that data into a surgeon’s field of view.
• VitalCom lets doctors talk with anyone else in the hospital with a voice command to their smart glasses or mobile device. It can also share the doctor’s point of view via the smart glasses’ front-facing camera.
• VitalStream streams live vital signs and alarms to the anesthesiologist or circulating nurse’s smart glasses or tablet during conscious sedation procedures.

Check out this video showing surgeons using VitalMedicals products:

http://youtu.be/ThZ0AoKGShY

A study conducted last summer at Stanford Medical School showed that surgeons using real-time VitalStream apps running in Google Glass wearables performed better than surgeons operating (on dummies) without the glasses.