Scaleup Garage 2020: Realize Medical
Founded by Dan La Russa and Justin Sutherland in January 2019, Realize Medical is a medical virtual reality company that specializes in using virtual reality and modern mixed reality systems for visualizing medical information and models in 3D. “The reason we exist is to provide an easy solution for the unmet need for 3D visualization in medicine and radiology,” explains La Russa. “Currently we do all kinds of diagnostic imaging and pre-surgical planning imaging and pretreatment imaging using CTs (CAT scan) or MRIs and we collect 3D information of patient anatomy that we view on 2D screens, among other imaging modalities. For various reasons, it can sometimes be very difficult to get a 3D picture of a patient’s anatomy just by looking at medical images the way we do today. To get around that, there is a long standing field of using 3D printing to create models of patient anatomy directly from patient images.”
Currently, medical 3D models are created from segmentations that are then sent to 3D printers so healthcare professionals can hold a physical model of a patient’s anatomy to gain a better understanding of it. Realize Medical seeks to “migrate the model creation process into VR. In VR you have the true 3D perspective views — you can view models in virtual or mixed reality systems and you can skip the 3D modelling process.”
La Russa works as a medical physicist in radiation oncology at the Ottawa Hospital, as well as an assistant professor of radiology at uOttawa and an adjunct research professor of physics at Carleton University. He and Sutherland are co-founders (along with Morgan Jarvis, a lawyer and our CLO). Like La Russa, Sutherland is a medical physicist at The Ottawa Hospital and Assistant professor of Radiology at the University of Ottawa. The two started Realize Medical after investigating the use of modern virtual and augmented reality systems as an academic endeavor in collaboration with the department of radiology and medical imaging.
“After a few months of basic investigations,” he says, “we discovered that some of the workflows for creating models is very tedious and time consuming, and the tools we use, namely computer workstations with 2D monitors, are not ideally suited to the task. Without a technical background in medical physics, we reimagined what that model creation would look like in a virtual reality format.”
The first six months of its existence, Realize Medical was focused on strategizing among founders what the company would look like. “We worked on development of our platform to mature it to a point where we could introduce prospective customers, and started working with physician and clinician partners. By the end of 2019, Realize Medical began to grow as a company when they received startup financing and used those funds to recruit a full-time software developer, CFO, and two temporary software developers including full-time student and part-time contractor. In the future, La Russa would like to see Realize Medical establish themselves as the company that took 3D content creation in medicine in a new direction. “The current paradigm is based on 2D tools and platforms,” he explains, “and we want to break out of that paradigm and set a new direction. We want everyone to consider a whole new approach to 3D model creation.”
“VR/AR/MR is focused so much on visualization and that is for good reason. We believe there is a lot more that can be done with those technologies for creating and communicating that content.”
*This feature was published as a part of the Scaleup Garage Company Series, 2020.
