Phantom Neuro, a startup that spun out of a lab at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine six months ago, is making rapid gains in its mission to give amputees lifelike control of prosthetic limbs, exoskeletons and other robotic orthopedic technologies.
The Austin-based company got an additional boost this week, announcing a $6 million seed funding round led by new investor Time BioVentures. The new investment brings the company’s total funding raised to $9.5 million.
More than 2 million Americans live with limb loss, according to the Amputee Coalition. That statistic is expected to grow to 3.6 million people by 2050.
Phantom Neuro is developing a flexible sensor device that could be implanted in the amputee to detect electrical signals from muscles. Those signals are then sent wirelessly out of the body, where they are decoded via artificial intelligence into intended movements and brought to life through a prosthetic limb.
The company said in a statement that its technology offers “unparalleled control of orthopedic technologies” and that its wireless communication makes it more scalable than other offerings.
“The field of advanced robotics has enormous potential to augment patients’ daily lives and yet we lack practical and effective commercially available devices to control these systems outside of the lab,” D.A. Wallach, the co-founder of Time BioVentures, said in a statement. “Phantom Neuro is filling this void by creating an elegant link between biology and prosthetics that has the potential to revolutionize the standard of care for patients.”
Wallach will also join Phantom Neuro’s board.
