Savioke to expand to the hospital delivery market
June 28. 2018
Savioke announced today that they have secured an additional $13.4M in funding. New investors in this round include Brain Corp, Swisslog Healthcare, NESIC, and Recruit. The round brings Savioke’s total funding to $31 million.
“With the new round of funding, we are expanding into the hospital market where Relay can help nurses, lab technicians, and other healthcare workers deliver essential items like specimens, medication, and supplies throughout the hospital,” said CEO Steve Cousins in a company blog post.
Interestingly enough, the company is partnering with Swisslog to help them enter this market. Swisslog has a strong presence in the hospital infrastructure market and they have been looking for a strong mobile robot technology provider for several years. This appears to be a wise partner choice for both companies, as Savioke will have instant access to a set of targeted healthcare customers and Swisslog gets a proven solution to ebbed alongside it's other healthcare solutions. Swisslog is owned by Kuka robotics, who are also working on their own mobile robot technology. However for this application, Savioke is a proven fit for deliver applications. Expect the Savioke Relay robot to be used to deliver pharmacy supplies and to move lab samples throughout the facility.
Image from Savioke Website
Another interesting part of the announcement is the inclusion of Brain Corp as an investor. In a separate announcement, Brain Corp has stated that Savioke will license BrainOS, a software platform streamlining the development, deployment and management of mobile robots. This is the first commercial relationship for Brain Corp outside of the floor cleaning market.
“Working with Brain Corp’s BrainOS platform will help Savioke scale efficiently to quickly deliver robotic solutions to our customers and partners in the global healthcare, hospitality and logistics markets,” Savioke founder and CEO Steve Cousins said in a statement. “As we continue to expand, BrainOS will allow us to better focus our internal development efforts on customer-specific applications and environments.”
