German medical device developer Hemovent said yesterday it raised $6m in a Series A round to support its portable extra corporeal membrane oxygenation system.
The oxygenation system is designed to support or replace the heart and lung function in the event of a cardiac or respiratory failure, and the company claims its device is the world’s smallest and 1st self-contained unit of its type.
“Our sophisticated investors are convinced that Hemovent’s portable technology is positioned to disrupt a billion-dollar market, whose standard therapy at present is complex to use, costly to purchase and, most importantly, not portable. While extra corporeal membrane oxygenation — ECMO — is well-established as an effective treatment for acute respiratory and circulatory failure, the expansion of ECMO treatment suffers greatly from the restraints of obsolete ECMO technology,” Hemovent CEO Christof Lenz said in a press release.
The round was led by MIG Verwaltungs AG, and joined by WCTI Partners, Seed Fond Aachen II, KfW Bank, NRW.Bank.Venture Fonds and PB Beteiligung-und Vermoegensverwaltung.
“Every ECMO patient needs to be transported under severely restricted space conditions either within a hospital or from a referring clinic, or even from the field of an emergency incident. In the course of treatment patient mobilization is a critical success factor for ECMO. Hemovent’s portable ECMO system is designed to reduce the footprint of the therapy by 90%,” Hemovent CTO Dr. Oliver Marseille, co-founder and CTO of Hemovent.