Cardiorobotics, Inc. plans to serve a number of different medical specialist areas, including: minimally-invasive cardiac surgery, electrophysiology, laparoscopy, colonoscopy, and arthroscopy.

In the United States alone, there are more than 1 million relevant cardiac procedures performed annually, along with more than 10 million relevant endoscopic and laparoscopic procedures performed annually.

The central element of our technology is a teleoperated probe consisting of a series of links.  The probe is highly flexible and thus either assumes the shape of its surroundings or can be reshaped.  The probe “remembers” its previous configurations as it moves through a three-dimensional volume.  The links of the probe can be made out of almost any material, including plastic, allowing it to be “disposable”.  A working channel or lumen, allows tools to pass through the probe and perform various procedures.

This teleoperated, highly articulated probe with a non-linear lumen is called an Articulated Robotic MedProbe or ARM™.

Cardiorobotics’ Articulated Robotic MedProbe has a number of distinct points of market differentiation:

• Single-port access for deep anatomical procedures
• Small diameter and radius of curvature
• Unlimited degrees of freedom
• Steerable, self-supported, non-linear therapeutic path
• Steerable, self-supported, non-linear visualization path
• Teleoperated, with “joystick” and “pause” button
• “Memory” - device remembers its configuration
• Non-linear lumen
• MR-compatible
• Disposable

Minimally Invasive Cardiac Surgery
The Company’s cardioARM™ will provide a breakthrough technology platform for minimally-invasive cardiac surgery (MICS), allowing a wide range of epicardial interventions via single-port, subxiphoid access.

The clinical benefits to patients are profound when an “open” procedure can be made minimally invasive.  By definition, performing any procedure less invasively results in less soft tissue disruption, with the effects of reduced pain, faster healing and recovery, and fewer complications.  Documented advantages of less invasive procedures include smaller incisions and fewer injuries to major blood vessels and nerves.  Other benefits reported include, reduced blood loss and decreased post-operative pain, and shorter hospital stays and faster return to normal activity for the patient.  Further, despite the higher capital expense of equipment needed to operate in a minimally-invasive fashion, overall costs of minimally-invasive procedures can be significantly lower.

We believe that the cardioARM™ can be applied on a broad range of medical procedures using minimally invasive cardiac surgery (MICS) as a focal application for this mechanism.  Cardiac surgery is different from other surgical procedures because the large sternotomy incision required to access the heart requires general endotracheal anesthesia.  The heart-lung machine that is required for open-heart surgery (e.g. valve repair) adds further morbidity.  If for that reason only, performing an epicardial intervention in a less invasive manner will dramatically improve patient recovery and decrease risks involved with the current procedures.

Laparoscopic and Gastro-Intestinal Procedures