Proximie: Using XR Technology to Create Borderless Operating Rooms

Founded by Nadine Hachach-Haram in 2016, Proximie was a digital medicine platform that used mixed reality and a host of digital audio and visual tools to enable clinicians, proctors, and medical device company personnel to be virtually present in operating rooms (ORs), assisting, mentoring, or observing those physically performing surgical procedures. Designed to be easy-to-use, globally accessible, and deployable on a wide variety of environments, Proximie’s technology enabled users on both sides of the platform to communicate and demonstrate in real-time where to make an incision or how to perform a certain technique.
Proximie initially entered the market in 2017 by commercializing its product in small-scale short-term contracts, but Proximie’s technology quickly gained traction. Over the next five years, the company raised $50 million in equity financing and rapidly expanded its footprint. By early 2022, Proximie’s technology was being used in over 500 hospitals in more than 50 countries. The company had offices in Beirut, London, and Boston and the team had grown to 135 people. They had also entered into several large, long-term agreements with hospitals, health systems, and medical device (also called medical technology or “medtech”) companies to further scale Proximie’s technologies.
Hachach-Haram and her team now had to decide on and execute the best strategy to take Proximie forward. Hachach-Haram believed that shifting the business model from directly providing the technology to clients through Proximie’s salesforce to implementing large-scale strategic partnerships was a promising path to growth. However, she and some of her investors were concerned that this could cause Proximie to lose some control over its technology. Equally important to Hachach-Haram was delivering on Proximie’s global health mission—namely, increasing the accessibility of safe and high-quality surgical care to parts of the world lacking it. She wondered how much she could focus on scaling Proximie in developed markets versus directing efforts to the Global South (low- and middle-income, “LMIC” countries in regions of the world including parts of Latin America, Africa, and Asia). Furthermore, Hachach-Haram was excited about the previously uncaptured OR data Proximie was able to collect. She had to think through how she and her team could best use this data. Should she focus on getting Proximie’s technology into as many ORs as possible or should she work on building a new platform over which other applications would run and use its data?