Mentice is a medical device company that produces software and hardware surgical simulation solutions for endovascular therapies. Founded in 1999, the company’s products are designed to help healthcare professionals acquire, retain and enhance their procedural skills. Their neurovascular, cardiovascular and peripheral interventions solutions help healthcare professionals acquire, retain, and enhance their procedural skills driving improved productivity and outcomes, all of which are scientifically validated and have been specifically developed for healthcare providers and the medical device industry.
Driving improved productivity and outcomes, Mentice software and hardware are scientifically validated and have been specifically developed for healthcare providers and the medical device industry. During the company’s more than 20 years of experience pioneering intervention simulation, Mentice has established approximately 50 medical simulation patents across more than 30 different training procedures.
The company’s purpose is to reduce deaths, injuries and costs resulting from medical errors and inefficiencies. With this in mind, Mentice strives to meet this objective by developing innovative and inspirational surgery simulator tools for the improvement of clinical skills. Additionally, the vision is to make healthcare simulation so realistic, effective and easy to use that Mentice’s simulators will be routinely employed by physicians as a natural part of their quest for excellence.
Working toward this goal, the company invests significant investment into research and development, technology acquisition and market development to attempt to create the world’s largest patent portfolio within medical endovascular simulation. Some of the clinical areas covered by these solutions include neurovascular, cardiovascular and peripheral interventions.
According to Mentice, more than 100 scientific journal papers have discussed company surgical simulation solutions. Of these papers, over 140 scientific have reinforced the value of simulation skills acquisition, retention and assessment.
Mentice’s mission is then to continuously innovate and develop products that make the clinical simulation experience go beyond realism, and to offer the most effective and stimulating solutions. The team at Mentice closely engages with medical societies, communities and industries to help ensure that the best possible training environments are created.
Leading this team, Göran Malmberg has been the CEO and Group President at Mentice since 2008. His background is in international management, sales and marketing of high tech products for various industries such as manufacturing, automotive, industrial products, medical technology and healthcare. Currently, Mentice is headquartered in Sweden and has subsidiaries in the United States, Japan and Switzerland. The company also has representation in Germany, China and Brazil, along with a global distribution network.
To spread awareness of Mentice solutions across this global network, company representatives often attend healthcare simulation conferences such as the Cardiovascular Research Technologies’ annual interventional cardiology meeting, the American College of Cardiology’s 69th Annual Scientific Session & Expo, Society in Europe for Simulation meetings, the The International Meeting for Simulation in Healthcare (IMSH) conference, the annual Annual Conference of the German Society for Neuroradiology and more.
Line of Vascular Surgery Products from Mentice
Of Mentice’s simulators, the VIST G5 is a portable high-fidelity simulation tool, enabling hands-on endovascular procedural training for clinicians and medical professionals. The latest generation of Mentice endovascular simulators, the VIST G5 has a modern design and stacks of technical improvements, bringing ease-of-use and simulation realism to the next level. The modules include a wide variety of training scenarios to challenge the learner’s technical skills, clinical decision-making abilities and procedural proficiency.
Key benefits of the VIST G5 are that the simulator supports real clinical devices up to 24F, has a plug and play setup with no calibration needed and offers advanced haptic feedback. This product further includes a VIST Control Box for realistic manipulation of cath lab fluoroscopy and table controls.
Next, VIST-Lab is Mentice’s stationary simulation solution, combining realism, ergonomics and ultimate flexibility. VIST-Lab is the optimal solution when realistic workflow and team training are provided. The solution mimics the cath lab environment by providing a full body mannequin, one 4K-UHD screen (fluoro, cine and vitals) and a HD touch screen (controls).
In combination with one or two VIST G5 systems, the VIST-Lab provides the ultimate flexibility allowing the system to be used either in a stationary setup, or, when required, be converted into one (or even two) fully functional portable VIST G5 systems. In addition the VIST -Lab supports treatment through the left and right femoral, radial and subclavian approaches.
To convert an angio-lab into a skills acquisition platform, the VIST Virtual Patient allows learners to rehearse interventional procedures and acquire new skills using a virtual patient. The VIST Virtual Patient can seamlessly integrate with world leading angiography systems. Whether learners are getting up to speed with a new X-ray system, exploring new techniques and procedures or refining processes to improve outcomes, the VIST Virtual Patient offers them an immersive, and radiation-free simulation environment based on real-life patient images and that assumes patient safety measures.
Another Mentice simulator, the VIST One TEE is the company’s portable transesophageal echocardiography simulation solution. This simulator combines realism and ultimate flexibility. VIST One TEE is a solution designed to help learners acquire fundamental echocardiography skills through self-learning and under expert guidance. Ultimately, VIST One TEE helps meet the need for highly complex interventional procedure training with a cost effective and lightweight solution for cardiologists, echocardiographers and industry field staff.
An example of the Mentice VIST technology is demonstrated through the integration with Laerdal Medical’s SimMan to bring learners the Laerdal SimMan Vascular. This immersive training solution is educationally effective for the practice of teamwork, leadership, and communication skills for a wide range of health care professionals encompassing all areas of patient care. By including VIST technology, Mentice is able to provide full emergency procedural offering that incorporates neuroradiologists (including Stroke Management), vascular and trauma surgeons, interventional radiologists (including embolization), cardiologists, trauma teams, EMS, nurses, resuscitation teams, anesthesiologists, emergency room assessment, cath-lab nurses and technicians, admin patient safety and process management.
Lastly, the Mentice Radiation Safety Trainer is a portable endovascular simulator combining hands-on training of radiation safety with basic angiography and intervention skills. The tool is optimal for hand-eye skill training, and offers radiation safety training combined with angiography and interventions in 40 patient cases. The Radiation Safety trainer includes the use of actual devices to enhance clinical realism, allowing learner sto train with the same devices used in clinical practice
The system is highly portable and consists of a haptic device, a dedicated control box and an external screen. This solution is both flexible and intuitive to set up and use, has a small footprint and can be placed anywhere and is robust and lightweight. This makes checking the Radiation Safety Training onto flights possible.