Johnson & Johnson has bought UW spinout C-Sats, which has created a platform to evaluate surgeons and helps them boost their skills.
C-Sats, a US-based healthcare technology spinout from University of Washington (UW), has been acquired by pharmaceutical group Johnson & Johnson for an undisclosed amount.
Founded in 2014, C-Sats operates a performance management platform that uses cameras in the operating theatre for surgeons to receive an assessment of their technical performance from off-site experts.
The technology helps avoid bias potentially present in internal peer reviews, where surgeons in the same hospital review their colleagues. It also enables surgeons to be assessed regularly, rather than only after an incident has occurred.
The spinout will be integrated into Johnson & Johnson Institute, the corporate’s education and training platform. All 20 employees will remain with the business following the acquisition.
C-Sats has raised approximately $6.4m in equity, grant and debt financing, according to regulatory filings, including $2.5m in funding and grants in 2015 led by the W Fund, the early-stage investment vehicle of University of Washington.
The 2015 round also featured WRF Capital, Founders Co-op, Point B Capital and Seattle Angel Fund. The grant was supplied by Wallace Coulter Foundation and UW.
Sandra Humbles, vice-president of Global Education Solutions, Johnson & Johnson Medical Devices Companies, said: “This scalable platform is powered by data capture, analytics and artificial intelligence, and will enable us to partner with healthcare systems in a differentiated way.
“It will fundamentally change how surgeons learn by giving them the opportunity to anonymously receive input on actual cases to improve their technical skills, which benefits patients, surgeons and health systems.”
