Company
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Company Name
Immertec
Year Established
2017
Sector
Technology
Stage
Finished Product
Location
Tampa, FL
Amount Raised
$1MM to $2MM
Connect
investment@immertec.com
Affiliation
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Profile
The way physicians train has not changed in over 200 years. “See-one-do-one” is the term used to describe this method, which requires physicians to give up multiple days of potential earnings, family time, and patient care to travel to a remote OR and observe a surgery to feel comfortable enough to “do-one” themselves. This form of experiential training has not changed, mostly because there is no better way to learn than experiencing a surgery first hand. This method, however, is extremely inefficient for both physicians and medical device companies. Physicians want to learn but can't afford to lose private practice, family, and patient time. Medical device companies can’t bear the extra long training cycles, sluggish adoption, and costly logistics. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) 5 billion people do not have access to safe and affordable surgery, which will cause 19X more deaths than aids and tuberculosis combined. To meet WHO goals we need to double the number of trained physicians by 2030. This is the largest problem in healthcare today and can only be overcome through technology which provides a real operating room experience without the huge opportunity cost of the traditional methodologies. IMMERTEC’s proprietary VR software allows users to train remotely through VR in an environment that provides a remote presence experience. In the same spot of the OR where a trainee would stand, our 3D hardware is set to eye-ball level. Once in place, and after a few simple steps, instant access is sent to trainees that can then put on a VR headset and access the OR remotely. IMMERTEC’s platform provides users the ability to immersively interact with the operating room theater, manipulate feeds such as the endoscopy or CT scan, listen to commentary from training physicians and ask questions all in real-time. This level of detail and user-directed interaction is exactly the type of experiential training that has proven successful over centuries.
Company Leadership
CEO / Co-Founder
Erik Maltais is the co-founder and CEO of IMMERTEC. With over 10 years of experience in forging international business relationships and creating e-commerce businesses, Erik is no stranger to leading companies to success. Even when he was just fourteen years old, his natural entrepreneurial instinct enabled him to identify business opportunities. At this age, he started his first venture after recognizing there were no ice cream trucks in his hometown of Manchester, NH. Forming a partnership with a neighboring state ice cream truck company, he started a business that generated revenues of often $5,000 per day, even making as much as $30,000 on the 4th of July alone. He later went on to serve his country in the US Marines Corps. He served one year in Iraq, where he was awarded the Combat Action Ribbon. After his time in the Middle East, Erik was accepted to serve in the prestigious Marine Embassy Security Duty. Erik served three-years protecting American embassies in Europe, Asia, and South America. Erik’s standout leadership and determination had him specially selected to augment Whitehouse and POTUS security during George W. Bush's presidential travels to the Beijing Olympics, Sharm El Sheik, and Berlin. After his tenure in the Marines, Erik returned to sunny Florida to finish his education and start his new life. Once again, his commitment to self-growth and passion for learning allowed him to graduate from USF with a BA in Accounting and a BS in Economics. Erik’s entrepreneurial spirit arose once again when he founded BBQ-aid, an e-commerce business based on selling high-quality BBQ accessories. Starting this business with only a few thousand dollars, Erik leveraged his resourcefulness and dedication to rapidly grow BBQ-aid’s revenues to 7 figures in less than 3 years before successfully exiting the business. Erik recognized future market opportunities yet once again in the world of Virtual Reality, and together with Jon Clagg formed the foundation for IMMERTEC’s proprietary, live-streaming VR software. Erik and Jon knew VR was going to be much more than video games and consumer experiences. There was a true opportunity to create business value and this is exactly what they sought out to do.
CTO / Co-Founder
Jon Clagg is the co-founder and CTO of IMMERTEC. He is a full-stack developer with over 13 years of experience in software development, with 6 of those years being directly focused on virtual reality software. In his first development role, he created automation systems for Cavalier exchange carrier, handling ticket generation, phone porting, and more. This sparked his passion for communications software development, which led him to create custom VOIP software. From 2005 to 2012, he learned a myriad of development libraries and programming frameworks that would serve as the technological foundation for IMMERTEC’s software. Jon was one of the initial adopters of virtual reality in 2012 when he received an SDK for one of the first VR developer kit headsets available. It was then that he decided to start developing a product to meet the needs of this emerging market. Jon has extensive experience in APIs, WebRTC, WebGL, Three.js, WebVR, Javascript, Java, PHP, Amazon S3, MySQL, Firebase Real-time Database, and Node.js. His skill set, unique development experiences, and passion for VR technology has equipped him with the means for overcoming the many unsolved development challenges of this newer technology. Jon quickly saw the potential for VR, and together with Erik Maltais formed the foundation for IMMERTEC’s proprietary, real-time VR software.
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