Brainlab Acquires Medical Video Game Innovator Level Ex

The acquisition supports the expansion of the Brainlab business, accelerating technology adoption and broadening the company’s reach

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Brainlab, the digital medical technology company, today announced the acquisition of Level Ex, a Chicago-based company that creates medical video games designed to advance the clinical skills of physicians and surgeons. The Level Ex expertise and product portfolio align with the broader Brainlab strategy to drive value creation across the healthcare data economy.

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Brainlab has acquired medical video game innovator Level Ex. (Graphic: Business Wire)

Today, the balance between data, technology and people plays a critical role in healthcare’s digital transformation. Brainlab recognizes that there is an urgency to deliver agile and scalable solutions in the immersive, virtual and mobile space to help drive meaningful development and the adoption of digital medical technology across the value chain—concept and development; sales, education and training; clinical decision support; global access; and consistency of treatment. The company is already integrating Level Ex technology across vertical and horizontal products with the Brainlab 3D Viewer software and a virtual sales tool for the company’s ExacTrac X-Ray patient position and monitoring system.

Founded in 2015, Level Ex is now considered one of the most innovative gaming companies as well as one of the healthcare industry’s “unexpected disruptors.” With a user base of more than 600,000 medical professionals including half of the medical students in the US, Level Ex keeps healthcare providers current in their specialties through presenting the ongoing challenges of practicing medicine as highly rated mobile games featuring continuing medical education (CME). The company is also helping NASA build a framework for future astronaut medical training through a prestigious grant from the Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH).

“We began working with Level Ex in 2019 for several reasons,” said Stefan Vilsmeier, President and CEO of Brainlab. “They are the best at disseminating best practices through video games, and they are unrivaled in their level of ergonomic user interaction, gaming-industry-quality 3D graphics, precise physics models and game mechanics psychology.”

With support from Brainlab, Level Ex plans to further expand its team to support demand from global markets and its growing partners that already include 6 of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies, as well as global medical device companies, and medical societies. It is also set to release new games in the areas of dermatology, orthopedics and oncology over the next year, alongside its popular games in general and interventional cardiology and airway management.

“Our mission is to advance the practice of medicine through play: unleashing video game technology and design to improve skill and accelerate the adoption curve of new techniques and technologies in healthcare,” said Sam Glassenberg, founder and CEO of Level Ex. “I can’t imagine a better place to fulfill that mission than Brainlab—a company that has fiercely advanced the cutting edge of medicine for decades and continues to build platforms that service broad ecosystems in healthcare.”

The Level Ex team brings a wealth of experience to the Brainlab group with backgrounds in large platform companies, digital health and the video game industry. The 105-person company became a wholly owned subsidiary of Brainlab at the end of May and will continue to independently operate from its downtown Chicago office retaining its name, management team, and medical and surgical gaming product lines.

The financial terms of the acquisition will not be disclosed.

About Brainlab

Brainlab is a digital medical technology pioneer founded in 1989 and headquartered in Munich. The company employs more than 1,400 people in 18 offices around the globe. Brainlab serves physicians, medical professionals and their patients in over 5,500 hospitals in 116 countries.

Brainlab creates software-driven medical solutions that digitize, automate and optimize clinical workflows for neurosurgery, spine, trauma, craniomaxillofacial (CMF), general and vascular surgery as well as radiotherapy and radiosurgery. Core products center around surgical navigation, radiotherapy, digital operating room integration, and information and knowledge exchange. The Brainlab open framework operating system will allow third parties to develop medical applications to further advance the field of spatial computing and mixed reality.

Brainlab is dedicated to creating an impact in healthcare. The company connects opportunities from emerging digital technologies to transform healthcare at scale and help improve the lives of patients worldwide. For more information please visit Brainlab, and follow on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

About Level Ex

Level Ex® creates industry-leading mobile, AR and VR games for physicians. The company uses state-of-the-art video game technology and cognitive neuroscience to capture the challenges of practicing medicine—revolutionizing the way physicians and surgeons advance their clinical skills, earn CME, and keep up-to-speed on rare cases, new medical devices, and drug therapies. The company’s medical video games, played by over 600,000 healthcare professionals and leveraged by top 20 pharmaceutical and medical device companies, national medical societies, and government organizations, are available free on the App Store and Google Play. Find out more at www.levelex.com and follow them on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

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