Loop Robots, a European mobile robot company headquartered in Delft, the Netherlands, announced the close of $2M seed investment by a group of private entrepreneurial investors led by Nanotech Ventures and Locapes Investment Fund.
Loop Robots automates disinfection using its smart robot SAM to make medical-grade sanitization faster, safer, and digitally auditable – helping to fight hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) while reducing the use of chemicals. Hospital-acquired infections with resistant pathogens kill 72,000 persons each year, just in the US, costing more than $45B/yr. Manual terminal cleaning of rooms in hospitals using wipes and chemicals is hard, time-consuming, not repeatable, and known to have an efficacy between 25%-50% resulting in 7% of patients in European hospitals acquiring an infection by a resistant pathogen in the hospital.
Anti-microbial resistance (AMR) is one of the most critical health challenges facing humanity in the coming years (WHO). Preventing infections, especially of vulnerable patients in hospitals and care homes, is an essential tool in the fight against AMR. The robot SAM utilizes powerful germicidal UVC light to deactivate up to 99.9999% (log 6 reduction) of bacteria, viruses, and other pathogens.
Safer hospital
“We provide a super-human tool, our co-bot SAM, to the cleaning staff in hospitals, and it helps them create a safer hospital environment without needing to work with chemical wipes and biocides. After having worked very closely with several leading hospitals in the Benelux, making sure the cleaning staff loves working with SAM, we are ready to scale up implementations of our validated and certified automated disinfection co-bot. Unlike previous generations of UVC disinfection robots, SAM is easy to integrate in the operational workflow of cleaning staff in the hospital which is key to large scale use,” said Per Slycke, CEO and co-founder of Loop Robots.
“We are impressed by the solution the Loop Robots team has developed and their responsiveness to input from infection prevention experts, cleaning staff, and facility managers to create a truly differentiated co-bot service that helps hospitals save money while improving quality. Our private investment group of experienced serial entrepreneurs and a long-standing family firm active for generations in hospital infrastructure is the perfect match for the company in this phase, providing strong financial support, expertise, and network,” said Job Elders of Nanotech Ventures, leading the private investment.
Clients
Loop Robots was co-founded by serial entrepreneur Per Slycke (CEO), Maarten Sluyter (COO), Mark van de Vrede (CCO), and Aswin Chandarr (CTO), along with several key talents from earlier high-tech mobile robot spinouts from the Technical University of Delft. The company’s clients and partners include Spaarne Gasthuis hospital, Rijnstate hospital, Pieter van Foreest care homes, the Public Health Laboratory Kennermerland, UZ Gent hospital, University Medical Center Groningen, G4S, Deutsche Post DHL and several top technical universities. Loop Robots was recently listed as one of the most promising AI startups/scaleups in the Netherlands and has been selected for the NVIDIA Inception program and recently won a Golden Ticket to Draper University, Silicon Valley.
Image: Cleaning staff watching as co-bot SAM from Loop Robots automatically disinfects hospital patient room using powerful germicidal UVC light. copyrights: Loop Robots, credits: Spaarne Gasthuis hospital
