Eugene Chiang

Vitestro, the pioneer in medical robotics advancing automated diagnostic blood collection, announced the close of a $70 million oversubscribed Series B financing. The round includes new strategic investment from U.S. healthcare leaders Labcorp Venture Fund, Mayo Clinic, and Sutter Health, new financial investors InterVest capital partners, MGFO Private Investments, PGGM, Puma Venture Capital, and ROM Utrecht Region, and continued support from existing investors Invest-NL (supported by InvestEU), EIC Fund, Fred Moll, NYBC Ventures, and Sonder Capital. Proceeds will be used to advance the next generation Aletta® Autonomous Robotic Phlebotomy Device® (ARPD™), enabling deeper integration into high-volume clinical workflows. The funding will also support Vitestro’s U.S. FDA De Novo regulatory pathway and global commercial readiness, including manufacturing scale-up, clinical expansion, and commercial infrastructure development, as the company prepares for broader market adoption beginning in Europe and progressing toward the U.S. market. “Closing our Series B financing reflects strong conviction in our mission to establish a new standard in autonomous robotic venous access and diagnostic blood collection,” said Toon Overbeeke, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Vitestro. “Our technology has evolved from a novel vision into a clinically validated reality, and we are grateful for the support of this distinguished syndicate of strategic, healthcare, and life science investors as we move toward broad clinical adoption. Diagnostic blood collection remains the highest-volume invasive medical procedure globally, with billions of procedures performed annually.” “The Labcorp Venture Fund sees strong potential in solutions that modernize core diagnostic processes and improve consistency for patients,” said Megann Watters, Head of Labcorp Venture Fund. “Applying robotics, multimodal imaging and AI to clinically validated diagnostic blood collection is an exciting approach, and we’re thrilled to support Vitestro as they advance this important work.” “Vitestro is redefining one of the largest and most under innovated clinical workflows with a first-of-its-kind autonomous robotic platform for diagnostic blood collection addressing an enormous unmet global market need,” said Dr. Frederic Moll, co-founder and partner at Sonder Capital and former co-founder and CEO of Intuitive Surgical and Auris Health. “I believe this technology has the potential to establish a new standard of care, much as robotic surgery did in its early days.” The Aletta® ARPD™ is designed to autonomously perform diagnostic blood collection. The system combines multimodal imaging, advanced robotics, and artificial intelligence to identify suitable veins, guide needle insertion, and collect blood samples with high precision and consistency. INGEN HOUSZ (Quirijn van Veen, Daan Gieben, Nienke Peters, Joep Wolfhagen, Eduard Stein and Eeke van Vegchel - Kenninck) advised Vitestro.

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🚀 Welcome to the Biostatistics Symposium of Southern California (BSSC) LinkedIn Group We’re excited to launch this community for professionals across biostatistics, data science, and the broader life sciences ecosystem in Southern California. Biostatistics Symposium of Southern California (BSSC) is a non-profit organization with 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status, created to bring together professionals from academia, biopharmaceutical companies, and the wider life sciences industry. What makes BSSC unique is that many of our committee members started out as attendees themselves. That perspective helps us design events and discussions that genuinely reflect the interests and needs of the community. Our mission is simple: 🔬 Prepare Through our flagship annual symposium, we bring together statisticians, data scientists, and industry leaders to share knowledge, ideas, and innovation across the Southern California life sciences ecosystem. 📈 Promote We highlight the critical impact statisticians and data scientists have across biopharmaceutical and life science industries, showcasing new methodologies and insights that are advancing the field. 🤝 Collaborate BSSC works closely with the three local chapters of the American Statistical Association (ASA): • Southern California Chapter (SCASA) • Orange County & Long Beach Chapter (OCLBASA) • San Diego Chapter (SDASA) Together, we aim to support the next generation of statisticians and data scientists driving innovation across biotech, pharma, and medical devices. This group will be a space to share: • Industry insights • Event updates • Career opportunities • Thought leadership in biostatistics and data science • Collaboration across the Southern California life sciences community If you work in biostatistics, statistical programming, data science, clinical research, or related life sciences fields, we’re glad you’re here. Welcome to the community. 📩 For any questions or inquiries, please feel free to contact us at BSSC.information@gmail.com

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Vitestro raises $70 Million in oversubscribed Series B financing to advance autonomous robotic Phlebotomy and commercial readiness. The round includes new strategic investment from U.S. healthcare leaders Labcorp Venture Fund, Mayo Clinic, and Sutter Health, new financial investors InterVest, MGFO, PGGM, Puma Venture Capital, and ROM Utrecht, and continued support from existing investors Invest-NL (supported by InvestEU), EIC Fund, Frederic Moll, NYBC Ventures, and Sonder Capital. Learn more: https://lnkd.in/erQgPt5y #robotics #roboticsurgery #surgicalroboticstechnology

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If you are coming in and doing discovery on PowerBI reporting, a super useful approach is to download the free DAX Studio add-in and use the export functionality to create CSVs of every "table" within PowerBI. You can then use those as DBT seeds that you can perform routine compares against in your data build process to validate transactional accuracy and no surprises slipping into your dataset. This is particularly important if you are reverse engineering trusted datasets. Form a validated foundation, then you can remodel and have solid content to tie out to.

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The largest SaaS companies don’t have customers, they have HOSTAGES! 😡 SAP, Salesforce, Trackwise, etc. I’ve never met a single technician who doesn’t hate them, their NPS must be -100. Want to integrate with their databases? First, they force you to sign a document swearing you WON’T migrate YOUR OWN DATA to another platform. YOUR data! I’m automating factories with AI, and the hardest part isn’t developing the agent… It’s integrating with these systems. Awful documentation. L1/L2 Support that knows nothing, and requests that you pay consulting hours with their "programming experts" just to understand how to use their shitty API, their Data Architecture, etc. ⏳😤 Last week I met the first factory willing to take the risk: ditch SAP and build their own DB! SAP made sense in the 80s/90s: the first “DB as a Service” before Cloud Computing and modern SaaS from the 2000s. Today? They scam you for MILLIONS of euros for a SQL database with prehistoric UX/UI. 💸🦕 Is it worth it?

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🔬 Exciting News! Hasun Yu and I just released a blog post showing how to build a drug discovery research assistant using Strands Agents and Amazon Bedrock. This solution helps researchers navigate vast amounts of scientific literature and databases more efficiently. Companies like Genentech and AstraZeneca are already using AI agents to accelerate scientific discovery. This solution makes it easier for more organizations to harness the power of AI in drug research. Want to learn more? Check out the full blog post on the AWS Blog! #AWS #ArtificialIntelligence #DrugDiscovery #Healthcare #Innovation #Tech https://lnkd.in/gmTbhgta

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UC Davis Health Ventures makes its first investment from the Investing in the Future of Medicine funding program. Delix Therapeutics is a University of California, Davis spin-out company. #ResearchofImpact https://lnkd.in/gsc8Bxnj

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🎲 I explored Google’s MediaPipe AI library, which includes pretrained models for object detection, image segmentation, hand gesture recognition, face detection, and more. These models are lightweight and run entirely on your local machine/device. 🎥 Using the hand tracking and gesture recognition model, I created a simple, browser-based drawing application designed for live video streams. It’s controlled by hand gestures and finger tracking, making it possible to use with video presentations, online meetings, or interactive demos where you want to draw and annotate while staying visible on camera. 👋 Drawing accurately with hand gestures can be tricky, but I found that using a fist gesture with the non-drawing hand to toggle drawing mode, combined with pinch gesture setting on the drawing hand, offers the most control. You can check it out here: https://lnkd.in/gsaYH97i

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In my work in healthcare, I’ve watched business teams struggle with fragmented CRMs, portals, files, and manual status checks. In this article, I tried to map what a different model could look like: • Life Sciences Cloud + Health Cloud as the engagement backbone • Data Cloud as the shared patient/HCP data layer • Agentic AI helping with BV/PA, financial assistance, pharmacy coordination, and adherence risk #Healthcare #Pharmaceuticals #Salesforce #ArtificialIntelligence #DigitalHealth #MachineLearning #DataArchitecture

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Celebrating a major milestone in cardiovascular innovation! UC Davis Health is now the first site in Northern California participating in the TRICAV-I Early Feasibility Study. With the investigational TricValve® Transcatheter Bicaval Valve System, the team is helping expand access to a new treatment option for patients with severe tricuspid regurgitation, including those who are not candidates for existing therapies. Thank you to the UC Davis Health Structural Heart Program for leading the way — driving research, innovation, and hope forward. #TricValve #TRICAV #StructuralHeart #TricuspidRegurgitation #Innovation CAUTION: The TricValve system is limited by U.S. Federal Law to investigational use. TricValve is CE marked and registered with ANVISA.

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