This week’s edition of InnovationRx looks at Vitestro’s newly authorized robot, Italy’s $10 billion pharma family, this year’s Covid-19 vaccines and more. To get it in your inbox, subscribe here.

Would you sign up to have your blood drawn by a robot rather than a person?

Last week, a Utrecht, Netherlands-based startup called Vitestro got FDA authorization to deploy a robot that uses AI and advanced imaging to find your veins, guide a needle into them and collect blood samples. Named Aletta, the robot was inspired by cofounder and CEO Toon Overbeeke’s experience seeing how hard it was for a friend’s father to get his blood drawn due to chemotherapy’s impact on his veins.

This has been a nearly decade-long journey. “Clinically this has never been done before,” Overbeeke tells Forbes. “Aletta makes the decision to do an invasive procedure....Getting that designed in a safe manner was critically important.”

Overbeeke, a former Bain consultant, launched the company in 2017 with Brian Joseph, who had previously cofounded a software firm that was acquired by Amazon. They’ve now raised a total of $110 million, including $70 million last March from investors that include the venture capital arm of Labcorp, the $27 billion (market cap) clinical laboratory behemoth; health systems Mayo Clinic and Sutter Health; and robotics pioneer Fred Moll, who cofounded Intuitive Surgical and now invests in robotics startups. Aletta was cleared for commercial use in Europe in August 2024.

Blood draws are one of the most common invasive procedures in healthcare, with roughly 1 billion of........

© Forbes