Augmedics may have just grabbed the deal of the century.
A quick background and three thoughts.
Background:
Surgalign spent $125M to acquire HOLO ($42M in cash and shares paid at closing, plus potential future milestone payments of up to $83 million). Then Surgalign spent 2 years getting HOLO to commercialization. I am going to guess that Surgalign had about $100M total invested in HOLO. Augmedics just bought HOLO assets for $900,000.
The HOLO Portal
HOLO Portal combines artificial intelligence and augmented reality guidance in spine surgery. It received FDA clearance for lumbar spine procedures in January 2022. HOLO is the only FDA cleared AI/AR technology in the world. The first procedure using Holo Portal was completed in May at Carmel-based Indiana Spine Hospital.
HOLO uses "real" AI (unlike fake AI claims from other companies). HOLO has a large dataset of lumbar anatomies that feed the neural net to 1) determine if a pixel is bone or not bone 2) categorize one of 7 anatomies of a VB (3 figure out the optimal pedicle orientation. This is real Machine Learning application.
For what its worth, HOLO Portal™ Surgical Guidance System was awa...
