ENvue Medical develops robotic feeding tube placement system

ENvue Drive demonstrates insertion of a feeding tube into a patient. | Source: ENvue Medical

ENvue Medical Inc. recently unveiled ENvue Drive, its robotic-assisted tool for automatically placing feeding tubes. The tool is built on the company’s electromagnetic navigation platform ecosystem, and is designed to integrate artificial intelligence, real-time navigation, and robotic-assisted procedural execution into a unified clinical workflow.

Each year, over a million feeding tubes are inserted into patients in the U.S. “It can be in critical care patients — that means elderly patients, adult patients, and all the way down to pediatrics and pre-term infants,” Dr. Doron Besser, CEO of ENvue Medical, told The Robot Report .

Most of the time, feeding tubes are placed blindly. This means the tube is inserted through the nose, and the person performing the procedure has to rely on their experience, and any resistance then feel while inserting, to get it right.

These procedures are always prescribed by a doctor, but they could be performed by nurses and dietitians, as well, said Besser.

“About 3% to 5% of all those procedures are misplaced, and they land in the lungs,” he said. “If that occurs, it creates a cascade of problems. It can cause lung collapse. Sometimes, one even leaves the feeding tube within the lungs, and it fills up the lung with fluid nutrients.”

Besser said the whole concept behind ENvue’s system was to make the procedure safer for patients, easier for the clinician, and less expensive for hospitals .

ENvue is building ENvue Drive on top of its 510(k) FDA-cleared ENvue Navigation Platform . This platform is currently used in hospitals across the United States to provide real-time electromagnetic guidance during enteral feeding tube placement. ENvue Drive takes this a step further, by having a robot insert the feeding tube itself.

ENvue’s system includes a sensor at the end of the feeding tube, which gives physicians visibility while placing the tube. It also integrates the company’s AI navigation software, Ask Oscar.

“When one inserts that feeding tube with that sensor within the field of electromagnetic waves, which covers the entire patient’s chest and abdomen, it becomes aligned,” Besser explained. “It’s activated, and that means with any movement, no matter in which direction, in 360º, the position is calculated by our system and presented on screen.”

He added that ENvue developed this sensor in-house. “One of the most important things with electromagnetic navigation systems is that the sensors have to have a very, very high refresh rate,” said Besser. “With ours, it’s about 40 times per second. Why is that important? Because if the clinician inserts that feeding tube, you want to see an immediate response on the screen, so there’s no delay.”