A Serial Entrepreneur: Miller School Neurosurgeon Leads World’s First Robotic-Assisted IV Catheterization
Summary
- Dr. Eric Peterson created the Ivy™ robotic vascular access platform, the world’s first robotic-assisted IV catheterization.
- The Miller School of Medicine neurosurgeon also created his own startup company to bring the device to market.
- Dr. Peterson believes such entrepreneurialism can bring important health care advances to more patients.
For Dr. Eric Peterson, creating start-ups to market medical inventions that enhance patient care is as important as the work he does as a neurosurgeon at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.
The founder and chief executive officer of Miami-based Hyperion Surgical, the company he founded to commercialize the Ivy™ robotic vascular access platform, the world’s first robotic-assisted intravenous (IV) catheterization system, says entrepreneurship enables him to help patients who may never enter a UHealth operating room.
“As a surgeon, I can only treat one patient at a time,” said Dr. Peterson, professor of clinical neurological surgery at the Miller School and director of endovascular neurosurgery at Jackson Memorial Hospital and the University of Miami Hospital. “By far the most effective way to really help as many people as possible is to build a system and create a company that can make products that help more people than I could ever treat as a surgeon in a lifetime.”
About the Ivy Platform
The Ivy platform combines robotics, advanced imaging and artificial intelligence to transform IV placement into a semi-autonomous process:
• Ultrasound imaging integration: Ivy uses real-time ultrasound imaging to visualize veins beneath the skin, ensuring accurate targeting even in patients with difficult vascular access.
• AI-powered vessel selection: Artificial intelligence algorithms analyze vein size, depth and surrounding tissue to identify the optimal insertion site and reduce guesswork and variability.
• Robotic precision for no-touch catheterization: Once the vein is selected, the robotic arm stabilizes the ultrasound probe and performs the catheter insertion with millimeter-level accuracy. The process eliminates manual needle handling.
Earlier this year, Hyperion completed a successful, first-in-human clinical study, marking the first time a robotic-assisted system has been used for peripheral IV catheterization—a procedure performed more than 300 million times annually in the U.S.
The company is preparing to submit to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and is planning additional clinical evaluations to further assess the extended capabilities of the platform. The company expects to begin commercialization within the next 18 months.
“The Ivy platform represents a paradigm shift in vascular access,” said Dr. Peterson. “No patient should be stuck more than once to place an IV. Our goal is to make IV placement more predictable, efficient and humane.”
Finding Patients Worldwide
Dr. Peterson hopes Ivy’s adoption mirrors that of the catheter system he developed to access the brain via the radial artery. That company, RIST Neurovascular, Inc., was his first startup and, after it was acquired by Medtronic, the product attained worldwide distribution, giving the new catheter approach a global imprint.
“I had someone from Afghanistan last week send me a message on LinkedIn saying, ‘Hey, I use your catheter and it’s amazing. We use it on all of our patients,’” Dr. Peterson said.
“Eric is a serial entrepreneur,” said Norma Kenyon, Ph.D., professor of surgery, microbiology, immunology, biomedical engineering, biochemistry and molecular biology at the Miller School. Now with the Diabetes Research Institute, Dr. Kenyon was vice provost for innovation at the University of Miami and chief innovation officer at the Miller School for 13 years, working to pair UM inventions with external investors. “Not only is he highly inventive, but he has the drive to power through the challenge of getting that initial prototype and then starting a company and getting investors.”
“There’s no playbook for it,” Dr. Peterson said. “You just have to figure it out.”
For Dr. Peterson, figuring it out first meant identifying people with the unique skills he needed to make Ivy viable.
“One of the challenges that you have to be O.K. with as a clinician is that you’re not an engineer,” he said. “So you have to be resourceful in finding those people and you have to enroll them in your vision. You have to make them understand this is an important problem that we want to solve, and I want you to stop what you’re doing and work with me on this.”
Once clinician-scientists like Dr. Peterson develop a product, UM and the Miller School have resources dedicated to assisting with the minutiae of entrepreneurialism, like licensing agreements and capital attraction. The Office of Technology Transfer, the Wallace H. Coulter Center for Translational Research, the Launch Pad and the Cane Angel Network all exist to create a culture of innovation, with faculty like Dr. Peterson serving as template and inspiration.
“Miami has become a tech hub in recent years and, as the leading academic institution in the region, UM and its ecosystem is a critical pipeline for innovators and scientists to commercialize their ideas,” said Dr. Peterson.
“Do you want to be translational or transformational?” Dr. Kenyon asked. “You can do great work, you can translate data, but actually being able to come up with something that changes patients’ lives for the better, like Eric’s doing…that is transformational.”
Dr. Peterson has long since answered Dr. Kenyon’s question.
“Once you get to that place, you really realize, man, this is what I should be doing,” he said. “This is really the way to help the most people possible.”
Tags: catheterization, Department of Neurological Surgery, Dr. Eric Peterson, entrepreneurship, neurological surgery, Newsroom