As a surgeon, Alberto Rodriguez-Navarro recognized that his patients preferred fewer incisions, so that they could recover faster from operations. With his engineer dad, he considered ways to make surgeries less invasive. The duo took a cue from their aquarium.
To clean the fish tank, the family used a tool guided by a magnet on the inside and another outside the glass wall. What if they could use magnets during surgery, the two asked, giving the surgeon more range of motion with tools used at each incision and reducing the number of incisions needed in operations?
Rodriguez-Navarro dropped his clinical practice in Chile, and in 2013, moved to Silicon Valley in California to pursue the innovation. Over the next several years, the venture he co-founded, Levita Magnetics, earned U.S. patents for its magnetic surgical instruments, pioneering a new category of tools at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Next, the company developed a platform combining magnetics and robotics, further simplifying surgeries. Levita’s MARS platform allows a robotic arm to hold and move a camera inside the body, no longer requiring an assistant to the surgeon to handle the camera. The system gives surgeons more work space and cuts labor costs for hospitals.
Now, Levita is expanding in Miami. The company just opened an office in Coral Gables to demonstrate its MARS technology to hospitals and to serve as its hub for the U.S. East Coast and Latin America, Rodriguez-Navarro told RefreshMiami.com. Plans call for at least 15 people at the office within three years, as sales grow, the surgeon said.
Mercy Hospital performs first surgery in Florida with Levita’s tech
To date, surgeons have completed some 3,000 abdominal surgeries using Levita’s magnetic-assisted technology worldwide. The first one in Miami took place this summer at HCA Florida Mercy Hospital, performed by bariatric surgeon Nestor de la Cruz-Muñoz. He found the tech easy to use and helpful.
“The MARS system was quick to adopt and integrates smoothly into how our team functions, providing stable, consistent visualization,” Dr. Cruz-Muñoz said in a statement about the new technology at Mercy. “Throughout the procedure, the camera and retraction are surgeon-controlled, which eliminates the need for an additional assistant at the table, minimizing distraction and maintaining optimal efficiency in the operating room.”
Levita is finalizing with a New York hospital to launch its technology there, and it’s talking to medical centers for deployment in North Carolina, Texas and other states, said Rodriguez-Navarro.
Levita’s funding tops $50 million so far
To grow, the company co-founded by Rodriguez-Navarro and businessman Nicolas Luksic has raised more than $50 million. That includes a Series C round of $26 million in 2022, led by a health tech investment group managed by investor Evan Norton, with participation from MedTex Ventures, Invermaster and Carao Ventures, among others, news reports say.
Expanding sales should boost staff beyond roughly 60 today, including 40 in California who work mostly on hardware for equipment manufactured in the US, and 20 in Chile who focus mainly on software including integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into the platform, Rodriguez-Navarro said. Creating and updating software in Chile, Latin America’s most economically developed nation, is less expensive than in California, keeping total development costs down, he said.
“Many people in Silicon Valley told me that we couldn’t build our systems with less than $200 million, but our team in Chile has been very cost-efficient and lean. We got our validation stage done in Chile at a fraction of the cost in the US,” said Rodriguez-Navarro. “We work to get the best out of both places: the US and Chile.”
Companies from Chile choose Miami as key U.S. hub
Levita’s Miami move comes as more tech ventures from Chile expand in Florida. Arcomedlab, founded in Chile and now based in Delaware, recently earned a U.S. patent for its 3D-printed, synthetic-bone implants that drip out medicine to reduce chances of infection after surgery. The venture aims to run US marketing from its Miami branch.
In addition, Chile’s Eniax is developing US sales from Miami for its AI-powered platform that integrates patient scheduling, diagnostic orders and other communication to boost outpatient healthcare – to name just two examples – to just name two examples.
“Chile has built a strong pipeline of innovative companies with the technology and ambition to compete globally. When these companies expand into the U.S., they are not only opening a new market. They are building partnerships, attracting investment and contributing to the innovation ecosystem here,” said Claudia Serrer, trade commissioner in Miami for Chile’s trade promotion agency, ProChile.
Meanwhile, Levita has more projects in the works: Adding AI and Augmented Reality (AR) into its platform and expanding applications for its tech beyond abdominal surgeries to other parts of the body, said Rodriguez-Navarro. That’s a long way from cleaning a fish tank with a magnetic tool.
Pictured above: Surgeons perform surgery using Levita Magnetics’ MARS platform with an AI-guided autonomous surgical camera. The on-screen view shows real-time visualization inside the patient’s body.
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