Deal highlights

• Medical errors are the 3rd leading cause of death in the U.S. They are a global problem affecting 232 million patients!
• 92% of operating room respondents felt that virtual reality training improves retention of medical procedures in a recent pilot. They described VR as "Transformational," "Revolutionary" and "Efficient."
• Boon VR uses cutting edge virtual reality technology to provide life-like, on-demand training for medical procedures!
• $1.4 billion potential addressable market for Boon VR.
• Running paid pilots including a Fortune 2000 medical device company and are in talks with several Fortune 500 device companies.
• Team: A leading cardiothoracic surgeon, multiple MedTech influencers, a veteran startup CTO, a former COO of Salesforce, a former Senior Director of Development at Oracle, all led by a successful serial entrepreneur.
• Have secured $375,000 in investments already.
• With VR training, life-saving medical devices such as pacemakers and neurosurgery devices can reach patients faster, because doctors can learn how to implement them quicker.

Napa Valley, CA - Cardiothoracic surgeons watching an Open Heart case in Boon VR.

Problem

Medical breakthroughs happen regularly, but training lags far behind. As procedures become more advanced and complex, the more difficult it is for doctors to learn and employ those new techniques.

Current practice requires doctors to travel to in-person workshops, which often requires a great deal of time and money. Once they return to their home hospitals, the main resources available for review are their notes and videos, both of which fail to capture the real experience of an operating room.

Solution

Boon VR is closing the training gap. Boon VR’s unique cloud platform allows doctors to virtually visit and revisit operating rooms where real-life procedures are taking place. Using Boon’s VR capabilities, viewers can peek over the surgeon’s shoulder, watch every incision, note heart and respiratory activity on the monitors and even look around to see how the assisting staff members are interacting. If the operating room is a living theater, then Boon VR puts the viewer on center stage.

Product

Boon VR’s advanced cloud platform is a full-scale learning management system in virtual reality for medical device companies.  Our customers can deploy VR training real time to physicians around the world using the Boon VR platform.  They can add interactivity to the training modules on-the-fly, and view the resulting analytics.

Boon VR — Step inside immersive medical training

How it works

Business Model

Boon VR’s platform is available under two subscription models for Medical device companies. Once the device provider is set up with Boon VR, they can offer VR training to all the hospitals they sell to. Each of these is a sale for Boon VR.

Traction

1. On January 25, 2018 a $4 BN medical device company began a pilot with a beta version of Boon VR training for their catheter device.

"Everyone is excited using VR as a training tool, especially for new people in the setting (fellows, nurses, technicians)." - From Pilot Customer Representative

Feedback from Pilot

2. In December 2017, Operating Room physician and staff at St. Helena Hospital, CA showed their strong preference for virtual reality training in a randomized pilot conducted by Boon VR. The respondents watched a VATs Maze procedure and an Open Heart Surgery case.

3. On August 25, 2017, a 100% of the focus group consisting of 42 Cardiothoracic surgeons preferred VR case training over conventional video training.

Current Prospective Customers

• A $500 MN neurosurgical device maker is expected to deploy their paid pilot in Q3 2018 upon their device launch.

• In talks with several Fortune 500 device makers for Boon VR training on their life-saving devices ranging from pacemakers to laparoscopic equipment.

Market Size & Opportunity

Boon VR’s addressable market is $1.4 billion globally. Medical device companies spend an annual $990 million on video training (global spend). VR training has the potential to replace video training as a more effective and realistic alternative. We also believe that a more compelling remote training option will shift a percentage of device companies’ budgets from traditional workshop training to VR training.

Go To Market Plan

Boon VR uses its team's strong connections in MedTech to generate referral sales, conferences and Continuous Medical Education events (CMEs), and digital and print marketing. We have deep relationships in the device space and with key opinion leader physicians from various service lines including Cardiovascular, Neurosurgery, Orthopaedics, and Interventional Cardiology. 

 We are an integrated team of medical, business and technical experts. Our thorough go to market plan was created with feedback from our team of MedTech veterans including Phillip Pellerin, Dr. Gan Dunnington, and Dr. Fumiaki Ikeno, and is being implemented by Ridhima Parvathaneni and Rajani Ramanathan with their enterprise sales expertise. 

Growth Markets & Expansion Plan

The Boon VR learning management system is designed to be scalable to other markets. While MedTech companies are our initial target market, we have identified and validated horizontal markets in healthcare for expansion. These include residency training in hospital systems, medical school curriculum for students, and nursing care providers (especially at-home nursing for elderly).

What's Next

Competition

A direct competitor of Boon VR is a discovery platform for doctors to browse 360 videos of medical cases and learn from their peers, as opposed to a full scale learning management system in virtual reality used by the MedTech  industry to train physicians. While their model is B2C, ours is B2B.

There are also several providers of heavy simulation training in VR generated by computer graphics, but they’re not learning management platforms focused on real case training. Unlike Boon VR they cannot scale fast with an infrastructure heavy setup.

Investors

Shareholders - Total $100,000

• Dr.Fumiaki Ikeno
• Blacktop Capital

Non Dilutive Funding - Total $275,000

• Ridhima Parvathaneni, Founder & CEO

Meet the Founder

Ridhima Parvathaneni

Ridhima is a serial entrepreneur who founded The Seaways Free Trade Zone in India that generates $4 MN annual revenue in just 4.5 years while displacing multinational giant DHL as the market leader. The Free Trade Zone significantly improved the Indian trading economy and allowed for just-in-time delivery of imported goods including medical devices and pharmaceuticals into India. She also founded Indian Impact, an online platform to reduce widespread malnutrition in India that helped 7,500 children. It has been featured by Forbes, Wharton Magazine and a majority of the Indian media for its innovative model and impact on society. Ridhima has dual degrees in Systems Engineering and Strategic Management from the Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania. She is now the founder and CEO of Boon VR bringing virtual reality training to the medical industry to improve efficiency in training and reduce medical errors.

Message from Founder

Hello!

I’m Ridhima Parvathaneni, Founder and CEO of Boon VR. Thank you for checking out Boon VR’s campaign on Republic. I started Boon VR in early 2016 to write the next chapter of immersive technology. I come from a family of doctors, and what I learned is that there is an enormous gap in the world of medical training. Life-saving medical devices are being created constantly, and yet, they sit on shelves because the training infrastructure needed to deploy them is slow and inefficient. It is unacceptable that people would not get the treatment they deserve due to lack of training!

We plan on taking the medical training field by storm and be a game changer for the millions of patients who will benefit from better trained surgeons!

We are a team of top medical, technical and business experts working to push the frontier of medical training and build a thriving company with high shareholder returns. I've invested over a quarter of a million dollars of my own money earned from previous successful ventures. I invite you to join with me to make VR medical training a reality, for a better, safer future. Join us!

Thank you,

Ridhima

Join the Boon VR Vision

Join us in bringing cutting-edge Virtual Reality training to medical device suppliers to improve their time-to-market and ensure the effectiveness of physicians’ training. - Ridhima and Team