Rheia Medical was founded in August 2023 after its founders observed how surgeons often spent valuable operating room time searching for the ureters, compromising patient safety due to the lack of effective and user-friendly tools. Determined to address this issue, the founders established Rheia Medical with a clear mission: to prevent and detect ureter injuries during pelvic surgery, ensuring safer and more efficient procedures.
The unmet need
The ureters, the two tubes that carry urine from the kidneys to the bladder, are known to be the nemesis of pelvic surgeons, as they can be very difficult to visualize during surgery. Even though the surgeon spends up to 30 min looking for the ureters, injuries occur in 1-2% of the surgeries and >50% of injuries are detected post-surgery.
Patient consequences are severe and include additional surgery, sepsis, kidney failure and even death. For the hospital this translates into costly re-operations of patients, prolonged hospital stays, wasted time and lower surgical efficiency.
The solution
Our medical device, UreGuide, prevents ureter injury by enabling fast and precise visual identification of the ureters through electrical stimulation. And even if an injury should occur, UreGuide can detect such injuries and warn the surgeon. This enables a quick repair of the injury, a significantly lower risk of complications and improved patient outcomes. And for the hospital reduced healthcare costs.
Benefits
Improves patient safety
Increases efficiency in the operating theatre
Easy-to-use device that integrates seamlessly in the existing workflow
The market
Ureter identification is a concern in >6.5M surgeries/year in high-income countries. Our target market are three specific surgeries carried out by gynecologists and colorectal surgeons, where >70% of ureter injuries occur. They amount to 3M procedures with an est. value of 1.05B USD.
Our team
Trine Munch Agerskov
CEO Strong industry background with 10+ years of experience from Novo Nordisk
