ORamaVR, a deep technology company specializing in virtual reality (VR) innovations for medical and surgical hands-on training, has moved its headquarters to Geneva.
Lonza announced an expansion to the company’s microbial manufacturing facility in Visp in the canton of Valais. The new facility will provide mid-scale commercial manufacturing to multiple customers and in particular, serve the growing needs of Servier, an independent international pharmaceutical company and long-term Lonza partner.
The COVID-19 pandemic has poignantly highlighted the critical role that healthcare professionals play in protecting people’s health and saving lives. At the same time, it has also exposed the global shortage of healthcare workers and the need for upskilling and reskilling. Deep tech company ORamaVR is contributing to bridging this gap through its proprietary technology, MAGES, the world’s first hyper-realistic VR-based software platform for accelerated medical training and assessment.
ORamaVR was founded in 2016 in Heraklion, Greece, as a spin-off company of the Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas and received initial pre-seed funding from PJTCF VC. The company has recently moved its HQ in Geneva, Switzerland, where one of its co-founders and CTO, Prof. George Papagiannakis, earned his PhD back in 2006, to meet the growing demand for its medical VR training software in the country. ORamaVR is also present in Silicon Valley, California with close collaborations with Stanford University and SRI.
“Western Switzerland has an excellent reputation as a leading life science and tech hub. Our new headquarters in Geneva offers exceptional possibilities for collaboration and influence, given the city’s unparalleled concentration of international organizations and other prestigious institutions,” said Paolo A. Catilo, Co-founder and CEO of ORamaVR. “The assistance provided by GGBa and DG DERI was instrumental in the rapid and smooth incorporation of our new Swiss entity. Both agencies facilitated our access to the region’s innovation and entrepreneurship community. Thanks to their ongoing support, new collaboration opportunities are on the horizon.”
“I would like to extend a warm welcome to Geneva to ORamaVR, a company whose mission it is to save lives by strengthening healthcare systems. As we have experienced throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare professionals play a crucial role, which must be supported through basic and continuous training with cutting-edge new technologies,” said Pierre Maudet, State Councilor in charge of the Department of Economic Development (DDE). “With the arrival of ORamaVR, the canton of Geneva emerges as the epicenter of a promising new business model, as well as an internationally renowned scientific and economic hub which stimulates the return of researchers turned entrepreneurs.”
Virtual reality against COVID-19
ORamaVR has already established successful partnerships with a number of healthcare facilities, both around the globe and in Western Switzerland. It has recently launched an intelligent simulation for COVID-19 training, in cooperation with Bern University Hospital Inselspital, New York University, and VR company HTC Vive. Doctors, nurses and students will be rapidly upskilled and reskilled in swab testing and protective equipment measures through an engaging, intelligent, virtual gamified experience that facilitates critical skill transfer from the virtual to the real world.
The Emergency Medicine Department of Bern Inselspital and ORamaVR have jointly developed a new learning module to train more than 300 of their residents and undergraduate students, in Resuscitative Endovascular Balloon Occlusion of the Aorta, or REBOA, an area that suffers from a significant training gap. ORamaVR also works closely with the Swiss Foundation for Innovation and Training in Surgery (SFITS) in Geneva, a world-leading center organizing and hosting surgical and interventional training for hospitals, medical associations and private companies.
