St Helens-based Inovus Medical closes £15m led by PXN Ventures with Unorthodox Ventures
This article covers Inovus Medical, a Liverpool city region healthtech startup that has closed a growth funding round of £15m to accelerate expansion into the US and other international markets and to extend its surgical simulator technology into additional specialties. The funding will support commercial rollout and further development of its simulation hardware and TOTUM software platform, and is intended to widen access to standardised skills training for residency programmes and practising surgeons.
Inovus Medical, a Liverpool city region healthtech startup, has closed a growth funding round of £15m (reported as $20m) to accelerate expansion into the US and other international markets and to extend its surgical simulator technology into additional specialties. The funding will support commercial rollout and further development of the company’s simulation hardware and its TOTUM software platform.
Why it matters
Surgical training is a bottleneck for workforce capacity and patient safety. Inovus’s funding round signals growing appetite for simulation-led training tools that aim to reduce reliance on in-theatre teaching. For a company already deployed across the NHS and in North America, fresh capital to scale commercially in the US could widen access to standardised skills training across residency programmes and practicing surgeons.
Inside the product
Inovus produces lifelike anatomical models made from advanced hydrogel materials paired with a software layer, TOTUM, which tracks trainee performance and enables remote feedback from mentors. The simulators are designed for hands-on procedural practice rather than observation, and the company says its kits are already used across nearly 300 residency programmes.
The business has formal links with professional bodies including the Royal College of Surgeons England and the American Association of Gynecologic Laparoscopists, partnerships that help position its products within formal training curricula and certification pathways.
Who are the investors?
Inovus reports the round totals roughly $20m, shown as about £15m. Around £7m of the funding came from NPIF II – PXN Equity Finance, managed by PXN Ventures as part of the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund II. The company also raised follow-on capital from the first Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund through Mercia, which has been an investor since 2018, and secured new investment from Texas-based medtech investor Unorthodox Ventures. The round was additionally anchored by an almost £1m investment from the Liverpool City Region Life Science Innovation Zone. Hayfin is listed among continuing backers.
The mix of regional public-backed funds, an established venture investor and a US specialist indicates a strategy combining local ecosystem support with targeted US medtech distribution expertise. That blend is intended to fund commercial expansion and product development across new surgical specialties.
In the announcement, Louise Chapman, NPIF II fund principal at PXN Ventures, said:
What Elliot and the team have built has the power to transform outcomes for patients around the world by making surgery safer through more modern and intuitive training.
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Founder perspective
The company was founded in 2012 by surgeon Dr Elliot Street and engineer Jordan Van Flute, who developed the original prototype simulator. The business is based in St Helens in the Liverpool city region and says it has invested in operational and technology infrastructure over the past two years to prepare for scaling.
In the announcement, Dr Elliot Street, chief executive of Inovus, said:
We are at an exciting inflexion point for the business having invested heavily in our operational and technology infrastructure over the last 24 months.
We are now poised to drive commercial growth across our key territories and surgical specialities with this new investment.
We are proud to welcome our new investors, PXN and Unorthodox Ventures, and are pleased to see the strong signalling from our existing investors Mercia and Hayfin, who continue to support the business and its mission to make surgery safer through better training.
The bigger picture
The round illustrates two broader trends in UK healthtech. First, regional investment vehicles such as the Northern Powerhouse funds are continuing to back locally based medtech companies through growth inflections. Second, UK surgical training companies are targeting the large US residency market to scale revenues and clinical adoption.
For Inovus, the challenge now is converting clinical partnerships and placements into sustainable procurement deals in hospitals and training programmes, navigating regulatory and purchasing pathways in multiple jurisdictions. The outcome will be a useful bellwether for other UK medtech startups seeking to pair regional public capital with specialist overseas investors as they expand internationally.
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