NerView Surgical

Real-time nerve visualization for surgeons

November 10th, 2025

Happy Monday.

Did you know that 3 out of every 10,000 standard surgeries end up with an accidental nerve injury? That might sound low, but nerve injuries are life-altering, very costly, and preventable… at least, if the surgeon is using NerView!

A question for you this week (which we asked last week) 👇️ 

If given the opportunity, would you invest in a startup we covered?

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Ethan and Arek 🦄

NerView Surgical is a medtech startup building a non-invasive, real-time nerve visualization system to reduce nerve injuries during open surgery. Its handheld device uses polarized light imaging with visible and infrared light to highlight peripheral nerves up to 5 millimeters beneath tissue without dyes or electrodes. 

Check it out: nerview.com

NerView is initially targeting high risk ENT (ear, nose, and throat) procedures such as thyroidectomies (thyroid gland removal) and parotidectomies (salivary gland removal near the jaw), with plastics and orthopedics positioned as the next markets. The company's business model targets two distinct audience segments, offering subscription-based pricing to private clinics and one-time-purchase options for larger-budget academic centers.

  • Raised $450 thousand in non-dilutive funding through grants and pitch competitions, including $100 thousand from the Ontario Brain Institute

  • Secured clinical advisors across UCLA, Stanford, UCSF, Yale, Harvard Medical School, and UPenn

  • Planning to raise ~$3 million CAD in January 2026 to fund FDA/Health Canada pathways, make key hires such as engineers, and build out its quality management system, with a U.S.-first regulatory/commercial focus

During the third year of his undergraduate education, Parikh was on a traditional pre-med track and planning to apply to medical school. This all changed when he took a health innovation course at McMaster University, which exposed him to medical device entrepreneurship. Despite having no background in surgery or medicine and not even being approved to be in an operating room at the time, he dove into the space by cold emailing and calling close to 100 surgeons to learn about their pain points.

As a result of these conversations, Parikh identified a consistent pattern: surgeons were frustrated with intraoperative nerve injuries during surgery, describing it as “operating blind” using only the naked eye. Those early interviews revealed a genuine unmet need, and he applied to McMaster's accelerator, The Forge. During the program, he found a research paper on visualizing white brain matter during neurosurgery with polarized light imaging. He realized the technology could be adapted for peripheral nerves throughout the body, leading to NerView's handheld, polarized light imaging system. 

Parikh discovered years later that his own grandfather had been affected by a nerve injury during surgery, adding personal motivation to the mission.

Preventing accidental nerve injury during surgery is critical for hospitals to maintain positive outcomes and control costs. Nerve damage during surgery can cause lifelong paralysis, chronic pain, and sensory loss, often leading to years of rehabilitation or revision surgeries. From a financial standpoint, these injuries extend hospital stays, increase readmissions, and are a major driver of malpractice litigation, with average settlements around $200,000 for upper extremity nerve damage. Under value-based care models, such preventable complications directly reduce reimbursement and damage institutional reputation.

This need has created a substantial market for nerve protection solutions, with the global Intraoperative Neuromonitoring market valued at $3.5 billion in 2024 and projected to reach $6.2 billion by 2034, growing at a CAGR of 5.8%. In North America alone, which is NerView's primary target market, the IONM market represents $1.7 billion and accounts for 47.2% of the global market. The equipment segment specifically, which includes monitoring systems and devices, comprises 45.5% of the total market, demonstrating substantial existing investment in nerve protection technology. Notably, 60.3% of this market consists of in-sourced monitoring, where hospitals purchase their own equipment rather than outsourcing services, signaling that healthcare facilities are willing to invest in nerve protection infrastructure.

Current intraoperative nerve monitoring (IONM) systems, such as those from Medtronic, use electrodes to record nerve or muscle activity throughout surgery. Fluctuations in these signals alert the surgeon to potential nerve stress, allowing corrective action before permanent damage occurs. However, this reactive approach only detects issues once the nerve is already under strain, leaving residual risk for injury. Additionally, IONM requires significant pre-operative preparation that disrupts the surgeon's workflow and consumes valuable time. The cost pressures on healthcare providers make workflow efficiency and complication prevention increasingly pertinent.

Alternatively, surgeons can use fluorescent dyes, such as ICG, that highlight the surrounding environment in real time. While this provides a more proactive approach to preventing nerve injury, the problem of pre-operative prep time still remains. Plus, this method introduces its own challenges such as the risk of allergic reactions and the need for precisely timed dye injections.

NerView addresses the limitations of both approaches through its polarized light imaging technology. It is both more proactive than intraoperative neural monitoring devices, visualizing nerves before any damage occurs, and non-invasive, unlike fluorescent dyes. The system requires minimal pre-operative setup, and the company's dual targeting of private and academic medical centers aligns with the existing market structure, where 69.8% of end users are hospitals conducting complex surgeries. NerView's non-invasive, real-time visualization technology positions the company to capture significant value in a validated, growing market where existing solutions fall short of clinical needs.