ABOUT RIVANNA

For healthcare providers dedicated to elevating their standard of care and enhancing patient safety, RIVANNA develops and commercializes world-first, imaging-based medical technologies. Our automated clinician-assistance solutions help improve decision-making, clinician workflows, health outcomes, and patient satisfaction.

RIVANNA is a privately held designer, manufacturer, and distributor of medical technologies and services based in Charlottesville, VA, and holds more than 45 global patents and patent applications protecting ultrasound-based innovations. We operate an FDA-registered and ISO 13485:2016 certified manufacturing facility where we produce the Accuro® product line and related medical equipment and components.

RIVANNA MILESTONES

RIVANNA'S HISTORY

RIVANNA was founded in 2010 by graduate students at the University of Virginia. Co-founder Will Mauldin initiated the founding of RIVANNA after taking a course at the Darden School of Business as a Ph.D. student in Biomedical Engineering (BME). Will saw an opportunity to apply his expertise in medical ultrasound technologies to address the high failure rates associated with epidural and spinal anesthesia placement. Fortunately, one of Will’s fellow BME graduate students had industrial product development experience, and so Kevin Owen was recruited to round out the team and formally establish the company.

With no company facilities or funding, early-stage development was performed in Kevin’s home attic, including assembling the first circuit boards in a toaster oven. Will created the first prototype ultrasound transducers using a trailer hitch and hot glue, which was tested in a deer spine phantom with materials obtained from a recent hunting trip. This initial prototype provided the basic concept and preliminary data to attract RIVANNA’s first outside funding from Wallace H. Coulter Foundation in collaboration with Dr. John Hossack’s laboratory at the University of Virginia. Private seed investment followed, which allowed Will and Kevin to lease office space and hire the company’s first employees. From that point onward, RIVANNA continued to grow by improving product technology and obtaining subsequent rounds of funding until the Accuro product obtained FDA clearance and started the commercialization process in 2015.

With a toaster oven, a trailer hitch, and deer-spine phantom, the initial Accuro prototype was a functional ultrasound scanning system due to resourcefulness and shared vision and responsibility.