Bayern Kapital invests in digital health start-up Virtonomy

Lands­hut / Munich — Bayern Kapi­tal, the venture capi­tal company of the Free State of Bava­ria, is inves­t­ing in Virto­nomy as part of a seed finan­cing round. The digi­tal health startup is deve­lo­ping an inno­va­tive, data­­base-driven soft­­ware-as-a-service (SaaS) solu­tion for medi­cal device manu­fac­tu­r­ers. Manu­fac­tu­r­ers can use Virto­nomy to bring their products to market faster and more cost-effec­­tively by simu­la­ting neces­sary tests or studies on the compu­ter during deve­lo­p­ment. The lead inves­tor in the seven-figure round is Dieter von Holtz­brinck Ventures. In addi­tion to Bayern Kapi­tal, the Initia­tive for Indus­trial Inno­va­tors and Plug and Play have also inves­ted in the young company from Munich’s WERK1.

Conven­tio­nal appr­oval proces­ses for medi­cal devices are time-consum­ing and costly. They are also often linked to ethi­cally ques­tionable expe­ri­ments on animals, and later on, risky human trials are often requi­red. The curr­ently more than 10 employees of Virto­nomy GmbH have ther­e­fore set them­sel­ves the goal of making these appr­oval proces­ses faster, more cost-effec­­tive and safer. The company, foun­ded in 2019 and based in Munich’s WERK1, deve­lops data­­base-based simu­la­tion solu­ti­ons for this purpose. The idea comes from the auto­mo­tive indus­try: instead of taking measu­re­ments while driving, a large part of the test­ing is done virtually. This allows more tests in less time and with more itera­ti­ons. Virto­nomy brings this prin­ci­ple to medi­cal tech­no­logy: The company builds virtual, custo­mizable anato­mies of human bodies. Manu­fac­tu­r­ers of medi­cal devices (for exam­ple, implants) can use Virto­nomy to test their tech­no­lo­gies on this virtual pati­ent at all stages of deve­lo­p­ment — from the concept phase to precli­ni­cal evalua­tion to long-term moni­to­ring in wide­spread pati­ent use. In this way, Virto­nomy can help to reduce the deve­lo­p­ment time and costs of medi­cal tech­no­logy products. At the same time, thanks to the large number of tests perfor­med virtually, a smal­ler number of animal and human tests are neces­sary in further development.

Virto­nomy plans to invest the funds from the seed round in the further tech­no­lo­gi­cal deve­lo­p­ment of the product, the recruit­ment of addi­tio­nal employees and the expan­sion of the constantly expan­ding database.

“From the begin­ning, we wanted to deve­lop a solu­tion that not only had econo­mic bene­fits, but also social bene­fits,” explains Dr. Simon Sonn­tag, CEO of Virto­nomy. “The deve­lo­p­ment of new medi­cal tech­no­logy products conti­nues to be parti­cu­larly time-consum­ing and cost-inten­­sive. That’s why young compa­nies like us that want to make a diffe­rence in this indus­try are also depen­dent on strong capi­tal support during the start-up and growth phase. We are ther­e­fore deligh­ted to have attrac­ted a consor­tium of indus­­try-expe­ri­en­­ced inves­tors to our vision in Dieter von Holtz­brinck Ventures, Bayern Kapi­tal, Initia­tive for Indus­trial Inno­va­tors and Plug and Play.”

Dr. Georg Ried, Mana­ging Direc­tor of Bayern Kapi­tal, says: “In the digi­tiza­tion of health­care, there is still enorm­ous poten­tial for deve­lo­ping inno­va­tive solu­ti­ons and buil­ding market leaders. Digi­tal health start-ups are inte­res­t­ing for venture capi­tal inves­tors because their products usually offer calculable deve­lo­p­ment times and good scala­bi­lity. In addi­tion, the appr­oval process is some­what easier than for medtech hard­ware. Virto­nomy scores points in seve­ral ways with its inno­va­tive idea: a promi­sing, scalable product with the poten­tial to make the deve­lo­p­ment of medi­cal devices more effi­ci­ent, faster and safer. We see enorm­ous growth poten­tial here.”

About Virto­nomy
Virto­nomy GmbH was foun­ded in Decem­ber 2019 by Dr. Simon Sonn­tag (CEO) and Wen-Yang Chu (CTO) in Munich, Germany. Virto­nomy is deve­lo­ping a cloud-based SaaS solu­tion for digi­tiz­ing the design and conduct of clini­cal trials of medi­cal devices using virtual pati­ents based on a high volume of imaging, physio­lo­gi­cal and patho­lo­gi­cal data. The over­all goal here is to end animal and human test­ing in clini­cal trials through the use of data-based virtual pati­ents. Virto­nomy curr­ently employs about 10 people, combi­ning exper­tise in medi­cal engi­nee­ring, medi­cal image proces­sing, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, nume­ri­cal simu­la­tion and visua­liza­tion using exten­ded reality. www.virtonomy.io

About Bayern Kapital
Bayern Kapi­tal GmbH, based in Lands­hut, was foun­ded in 1995 as a wholly owned subsi­diary of LfA Förder­bank Bayern on the initia­tive of the Bava­rian state govern­ment. As the venture capi­tal company of the Free State of Bava­ria, Bayern Kapi­tal provi­des equity capi­tal to the foun­ders of inno­va­tive high-tech compa­nies and young, inno­va­tive tech­no­logy compa­nies in Bava­ria. Bayern Kapi­tal curr­ently mana­ges twelve invest­ment funds with an invest­ment volume of around 500 million euros. To date, Bayern Kapi­tal has inves­ted around 350 million euros of venture capi­tal in around 290 inno­va­tive tech­­no­­logy-orien­­ted compa­nies from a wide range of sectors, inclu­ding life scien­ces, soft­ware & IT, mate­ri­als & new mate­ri­als, nano­tech­no­logy and envi­ron­men­tal tech­no­logy. As a result, more than 8,000 jobs have been perma­nently crea­ted in Bava­ria in sustainable compa­nies. www.bayernkapital.de