ROCA X moves fast to back up XVision’s international expansion through a bridge round – When a company gains international traction, its investors must be ready to react as swiftly as possible.
Bucharest, 14th of October 2021 – XVision, the MedTech company behind the software solution that enables radiologists to analyze X-Rays and CT scans using AI announces the opening of a new fundraising round to fuel their CEE expansion. ROCA X, part of Impetum Group and one of the early investors in the company follows-up through a bridge round meant to provide the company with more flexibility in structuring their future round. Through this bridge round, ROCA X continues to pursue its mission to provide startups with swift access to the resources they need to grow and scale.
“When a project develops fast, the reaction speed of those involved in it becomes the decisive factor in its development and it is the duty of the investors to be prepared to react as fast as needed to maintain the growth pace. Through ROCA X, we want to provide founders with the flexibility they need to scale their businesses, without having their company’s growth threaten by long fundraising periods.” states Alexandru Bogdan, ROCA X CEO.
During the last year alone, XVision has implemented their automatic X-Ray analysis solution in over 30 public and private hospitals across Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland, and are now processing over 70% of the medical images that go through these medical institutions. The COVID-19 pandemic also contributed to the solution’s adoption. As doctors’ time becomes increasingly precious, they rely more and more on digital solutions. Using XVision’s algorithms, medical institutions have managed to analyze more images faster, as XVision is also able to detect, among other thoracic pathologies found on X-Rays and CT scans, signs of SARS-CoV2 infection.
„The problem we want to solve with XVision, that of the radiologists’ heavy workload, has been existing long before the pandemic. COVID-19 further exacerbated it, and we realized that we needed to move faster than we’ve anticipated. Consequently, we focused on deploying XVision in as many hospitals as possible in Romania to validate that our product provides real value to the doctors. The international expansion followed naturally to the point where we are already present in hospitals across the CEE. ROCA X investment is essential for us because it allows us to meet the demand we have in these foreign markets, and it is also a step forward towards raising a more complex round.”, says Ștefan Iarca, co-founder and CEO XVision.
In the long run, XVision’s mission is to become a leading platform for medical deep-tech solutions, compatible with any other solution used in medical imaging. In the near future, the company’s objective is to extend its operations in the CEE.
Europe is the region with the fastest growth in the demand for radiology, but faces a 30% shortage of trained radiologists. AI-based X-Ray analysis is currently a niche worth about $400 bn annually and grows consistently by over 20% each year – this niche alone is forecasted to grow larger than the current size of the radiology market by 2031.
“XVision is one of the few companies we have chosen to back up even though their product wasn’t launched when we first met because the efficiency they could bring to medical imaging analysis was hard to ignore – in the last 15 years alone, the number of X-Rays analyzed by a doctor on a daily basis quadrupled and tiredness slowly became the main reason behind interpretation errors. Almost every country in Europe is currently facing a shortage of radiologists, and medical imaging is one of the domains where AI can have a large impact for both doctors and society. But the opportunities grow far beyond radiology – in the following years every medical process will be augmented by technology in one way or another. Given Romania’s large number of proficient software developers, coupled with the emergence of a new generation of tech-savvy doctors, Romania could become an important MedTech hub within a short time.” states Bogdan Pașca, ROCA X Junior Investment Manager.
About ROCA X
ROCA X is a project aimed at disruptive early-stage companies, that backs technology entrepreneurs with revolutionary, market-tested ideas, and whose vision is to offer startups all the tools they need to access the capital required to scale.
ROCA X is part of Impetum Group, a Romanian business group consisting of CITR, ROCA, and ROCA X, and whose mission is to maximize the business value during every stage of a company’s lifecycle. Impetum Grup is: Pro Business, Against Value Destruction.
About XVision
XVision is a Romanian startup founded by a multidisciplinary team from Timisoara, specialized in AI, deep-learning and medical process optimization. XVision employs AI algorithms to analyze medical images (X-Rays and CT scans), assisting the doctor during diagnosis. The company was founded in 2018 and is backed by Gapminder, ROCA X, Cleverage, Cristian Pop, and Ciprian Man.
