Titan Medical Brand Guidelines: The Toronto Single-Port Robot Maker That Became Conavi

A Toronto robot built around a single point of entry.

Titan Medical was a Toronto company that set out to build a surgical robot working through a single point of access into the body. MedTech Dive described it in March 2023 as a Toronto-based company developing a single-port robotic surgery system, starting with gynecological procedures. In 2019 reporting the system was called the SPORT Surgical System, which MedTech Dive said was designed to allow image-guided, minimally invasive procedures; later reports name the robot Enos.

The trade press followed a long and difficult development. In November 2019 MedTech Dive reported that Titan was suspending development of the system while it looked for new funding, and that its then chief executive, David McNally, blamed “inhospitable conditions in the equity capital markets.” Earlier that year the company had warned that its plan to file a 510(k) application with the US Food and Drug Administration was falling behind schedule. Before the pause it had completed laboratory study surgeries in preparation for an Investigational Device Exemption application, the step that would allow the robot to be used in a clinical study; it said that filing would wait until its financial position was secured and development was complete. To raise money it had agreed in August 2019 to sell shares on request to Aspire Capital, a Chicago investment fund, and McNally said the company was exploring other financing options, including strategic investments.

Titan also began to earn from its patents. In June 2020 it granted Medtronic an exclusive licence to a portion of its intellectual property, in return for a one-time upfront royalty payment, MedTech Dive reported in May 2023.

Delays, a strategic review and a licence to Intuitive.

The robot never reached the market. In late 2021, MedTech Dive reported, Titan said additional time and work would be needed before its IDE submission, and its chief executive stepped down shortly afterwards. In December 2021 Nasdaq sent the company a deficiency notice for failing to meet its minimum bid price requirement. Titan cut costs and, in 2022, began looking at strategic alternatives, citing cash concerns and limited access to new capital.

In February 2023 the company laid off 48 employees at its operations in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, leaving 18 to work on a possible transaction and on administration, and halted development of Enos, including the work on its IDE filing. In March 2023 a Nasdaq panel decided to delist its shares, MedTech Dive reported; Titan kept its listing on the Toronto Stock Exchange and expected to trade over the counter in the United States.

No buyer came forward. In May 2023 Titan said it had contacted more than 55 potential counterparties, none of which expressed an interest in buying the company. Instead it granted Intuitive Surgical a non-exclusive licence to most of its intellectual property, including patents on entering the body through a single access point; the only patents left out were those already licensed exclusively under the June 2020 agreement. At the same time Cary Vance stepped down as president and chief executive, and the board chair, Paul Cataford, took on those roles on an interim basis. MedTech Dive noted that the company was continuing to look at further licensing opportunities.

Design and documentation.

Surgical robotics companies sell machines that most people will never see in use, so their public image is built from a small set of scenes. The commonest is the operating theatre itself: robot arms draped and angled over a table, a console set a few steps away, and a surgical team in scrubs around them. When the BBC reported a new British surgical robot in 2018, one of its pictures showed a surgeon steering a robot from a console.

The second scene is the surgeon’s own view. Many systems give the surgeon a 3D screen or viewer and hand controls, and company photographs often show a surgeon leaning into that viewer or working the controls, sometimes beside a screen showing the magnified view inside the body. Close-ups of instruments follow: slim shafts, small jaws and wristed tips that bend and turn, shown at a scale no visitor to a hospital would normally see.

Clean product renders do much of the remaining work. Arms, carts and consoles are shown against plain white or soft grey grounds, with a restrained palette of whites, greys and a single brand colour, so that the machine reads as precise and calm. Museums have started to collect the results; in 2023 the Science Museum in London put a surgical robot arm on show in its Engineers gallery.

The industry meets at its own congresses. In North America, the annual meeting of SAGES, the Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons, is a regular venue for new systems; in Europe there is the annual congress of the EAES, the European Association for Endoscopic Surgery; and in London the Hamlyn Symposium on Medical Robotics brings engineers and surgeons together. The companies in this guide range from established makers to closed ventures, and each guide sets out what can be checked about them.

From surgical robots to a coronary imaging company.

By then the trade press described Titan less as a robot maker than as a holder of patents. In April 2024 Knobbe Martens called it a medical technology licensing company based in Toronto with an extensive patent portfolio in robotic-assisted surgery, and in July 2024 Medical Device Developments said it was focused on further development of its intellectual property. Titan’s end as a robotics company came through a merger outside robotics. In March 2024 it agreed to combine with Conavi Medical, a Toronto imaging company, in what MedTech Dive described as a reverse takeover. Conavi’s product is the Novasight Hybrid System, a catheter-based device used to guide minimally invasive coronary procedures; a blog post by the law firm Knobbe Martens explained in April 2024 that it combines intravascular ultrasound and optical coherence tomography. Titan’s board approved a move away from developing robotic-assisted surgery technologies, though Titan kept the rights to develop Enos. The agreement was amended in May 2024 and again in July 2024, Medical Device Developments reported, to allow more time to meet closing conditions.

The transaction closed on 11 October 2024. In its announcement that day, distributed through GlobeNewswire, the company said that immediately before closing Titan Medical Inc. had changed its name to Conavi Medical Corp. and consolidated its shares, that Titan’s officers and directors had resigned, and that the combined company would focus on the Novasight system. It also said it planned to leave the Toronto Stock Exchange and trade on the TSX Venture Exchange under a new symbol. Titan Medical therefore no longer exists as a company under its own name; the business that carries on its listing is Conavi Medical.

For a design guide, Titan Medical shows how a medical-device name can end up standing for a body of patents rather than a product in hospitals. Compare Intuitive, which licensed Titan’s patents in 2023, and Medtronic, which took an exclusive licence in 2020. For this guide we use slate blue, graphite, a cool grey and a muted copper with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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