Mecuris GmbH secures seed financing for enabling digital prosthetics and orthotics

High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF), together with Bayern Kapital, is investing in Munich-based medical technology startup Mecuris. Specialising in personalised and additively manufactured orthopaedic patient aids, Mecuris offers an innovative solution platform for hospitals and medical supply stores. The latest financing will be used to expand the platform and develop additional applications.

Orthopaedic technology continues to be a largely manual, craft-based trade, even in times of increasing digitalisation across all industries. However, rising cost pressure is resulting in patients increasingly being provided with standard products instead of individually tailored and manually produced patient aids.

Mecuris enables the individual and custom-made production of orthopaedic aids by means of an intuitive web-based platform and subsequent manufacturing using 3D printing. This includes orthoses (e.g. for stabilising the cervical spine) and prostheses (e.g. artificial limbs), as well as equipment such as covers for below-knee prostheses. Mecuris not only provides orthopaedic clinics and medical supply stores with its innovative platform, but also with a full service package right up to delivery of the manufactured products. Design data is adjusted to a patient’s anatomy in an automated fashion based on digital patient data (CT, scanning, photos).

Wolf-Peter Werner, CFO at Mecuris, explains: “Our platform is a self-learning system that uses processes from the fields of artifical intelligence and medical image processing. The production of orthopaedic aids is thus conducted in a decentralised manner using additive manufacturing technology (3D printing) in certified centres.”

Dr. Frank Hensel, Investment Manager at HTGF, is convinced of the technology: “The benefits of additive manufacturing are manifold. Doctors and orthopaedic technicians are able to use Mecuris’ technology without needing to have any previous technical know-how in CAD construction or 3D printing. Production time is reduced significantly thanks to the digital process chain.”

The market for orthopaedic aids has grown significantly and continues to grow as a result of demographic change and lifestyle diseases like diabetes. Manuel Opitz, CEO of Mecuris, explains: “In Germany alone, market spending has doubled over the last 20 years to more than € 1.8 billion in 2015. At the same time, the orthopaedic industry complains of a glaring lack of skilled workers: According to WHO estimates, ten times more experts are required than are currently available.”

About Mecuris
Mecuris was founded in 2016 as a spin-off of the Hospital of the Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU) Munich. The interdisciplinary team of founders comprising six members have more than 70 years professional experience – 25 of which in medical/medical technology research – and experience from founding seven startups. Together with three additional employees, Mecuris works in collaboration with leading orthopaedic suppliers and medical supply stores on digital prosthetics and orthotics.

About Bayern Kapital
Bayern Kapital GmbH in Landshut was founded in 1995 at the initiative of the Bavarian state government as a wholly owned subsidiary of the LfA Foerderbank Bayern (Bavaria‘s development bank). As a venture capital company of the State of Bavaria, Bayern Kapital makes share capital available to founders of innovative high tech companies and young, innovative technology companies. Bayern Kapital currently manages eleven funds to a value of 340 million euros. Bayern Kapital has invested almost 238 million euros in some 250 innovative technology companies in a wide range of industries, including life sciences, software & IT, medical technology, materials & new materials, nanotechnology and environmental technology. This has helped create over 5,000 steady jobs in companies with good future prospects.

Press contact:
IRA WÜLFING KOMMUNIKATION GmbH
Dr. Reinhard Saller
Tel.: +49.89.200030-30
bayernkapital@wuelfing-kommunikation.de

About HTGF
High-Tech Gruenderfonds invests in young, high potential high-tech start-ups. The seed financing provided is designed to enable start-ups to take an idea through prototyping and to market launch. Typically, High-Tech Gruenderfonds invests EUR 600,000 in the seed stage, with the potential for up to a total of EUR 2 million per portfolio company in follow-on financing. Investors in this public/private partnership include the Federal Ministry of Economics and Energy, the KfW Banking Group, as well as strategic corporate investors including ALTANA, BASF, Bayer, B. Braun, Robert Bosch, CEWE, Daimler, Deutsche Post DHL, Deutsche Telekom, Evonik, Lanxess, media + more venture Beteiligungs GmbH & Co. KG, METRO, Qiagen, RWE Innogy, SAP, Tengelmann and Carl Zeiss. High-Tech Gruenderfonds has about EUR 576 million under management in two funds (EUR 272 million HTGF I, EUR 304 million HTGF II).

Contact:
High-Tech Gründerfonds Management GmbH
Dr. Frank Hensel
Schlegelstr. 2
53113 Bonn
Tel.: +49.228.823001.00
Fax: +49.228.823000.50
info@htgf.de
www.high-tech-gruenderfonds.de