Industrial
ENvue Medical Inc. recently unveiled ENvue Drive, its robotic-assisted tool for automatically placing feeding tubes. The tool is built on the company’s electromagnetic navigation platform ecosystem, and is designed to integrate artificial intelligence, real-time navigation, and robotic-assisted procedural execution into a unified clinical workflow.
Each year, over a million feeding tubes are inserted into patients in the U.S. “It can be in critical care patients that means elderly patients, adult patients, and all the way down to pediatrics and pre-term infants,” Dr. Doron Besser, CEO of ENvue Medical, told The Robot Report. Most of the time, feeding tubes are placed blindly, relying on the clinician’s experience and feel. About 3% to 5% of all those procedures are misplaced and land in the lungs, which can cause lung collapse or fill the lung with fluid nutrients.
Besser said the whole concept behind ENvue’s system was to make the procedure safer for patients, easier for the clinician, and less expensive for hospitals.
ENvue is building ENvue Drive on top of its 510(k) FDA-cleared ENvue Navigation Platform, which provides real-time electromagnetic guidance during enteral feeding tube placement. ENvue Drive takes this a step further by having a robot insert the feeding tube itself. The system includes a sensor at the end of the feeding tube, giving physicians visibility while placing it.
Source: The Robot Report