It's an unpleasant scene, but one that occurs daily in medical centers around the world. A person needs a urinary catheter. The nurse begins to place it. The catheter encounters an obstruction, so the nurse pulls it out and tries again. And again.
A Westerville company,
PercuVision, has come up with a camera-aided alternative to make such a situation safer and more bearable. Called DirectVision, the technology is being used by nurses around the country.
"We added vision to urinary catheterization," says founder and CEO Errol Singh, who also practices urology at Capital Urology in Columbus. "As urologists, we have scopes in our hands that give us vision, and we use that primarily for diagnostic and other procedures, but the nurses unfortunately don't when they run into a difficult catheterization. (Now) the nurses can see what the problem is and are able to turn it and guide it."
PercuVision was founded in 2007, and DirectVison received FDA approval in August of 2009.
"It took time to make it through the commercialization process and get our supply chain established and so forth," says Singh. However, since then reception of the product "has been very very positive on a number of fronts. The technology is being embraced system wide in OhioHealth and we have the technology deployed in approximately six or seven sites around the country. We probably have another dozen or so sites that will be getting the technology soon."
OhioHealth, through the
OhioHealth Research Institute, has supported Singh's work by facilitating clinical trials designed to confirm the device's effectiveness, he says. Other supporters include angel investors (who have funded the company to the tune of $6 million) and the Ohio Department of Development, which earlier this year awarded PercuVision a $1-million grant to develop the next generation of technology.
While the company currently employs 15 people -- 13 of whom are located in Ohio -- PercuVision plans to hire an additional 42 people in the next three to four years as the next generation of vision-guided catheters come to market.
Source: Errol Singh, PercuVision
Writer: Gene Monteith