Alesi Surgical
Alesi Surgical was established in 2009 to commercialise inventions arising from the Welsh Institute for Minimal Access Therapy (WIMAT).
Based in Cardiff, WIMAT is one of the UK’s leading training centres for laparoscopic surgery. Alesi Surgical works with leading surgeons and surgical trainers to identify common issues encountered in surgery, then designs products to resolve these issues – resulting in safer, faster, more cost-effective procedures and a smoother operative flow.
Alesi Surgical initially worked with funding from the University’s own seed fund. A prototype developed in 2009 yielded promising results, and development continued following a further equity investment. After much hard work the product was awarded a CE mark and approved for launch in January 2014.
Approach
Once the product development was concluded and cleared for use in the EU, Alesi sought a distribution network to drive sales for Ultravision. Ideas in Medicine used its global connections to create a broad distribution platform of 19 distributors across 25 territories.
Results
Dr Dominic Griffiths, Managing Director of Alesi-Surgical commented ’The appointment of a distributor network was an important step for us and our funders. Although we had already raised substantial equity to develop the product, it was the latest funding round, which raised over £2million, that will bring us to full commercialisation – and establishing a distributor network was critical to achieving this.
Ideas in Medicine also played an integral role in Alesi gaining US FDA approval.