Cary’s Lucerno Dynamics Partners with Med Tech Giant Siemens

Lucerno Dynamics has landed a critical partnership with one of the world's largest healthcare suppliers.

The Cary med tech startup confirmed this week that it has entered into a Master Resellers Agreement with Siemens Healthineers, the parent company for several medical technology companies, which is headquartered in Erlangen, Germany.

The deal will see Siemens become the first partner reseller for Lucerno’s Lara System in the United States.

The system is a noninvasive medical device that helps clinicians detect “infiltrations,” which are incidents that occur when radioactive material is mistakenly injected into the soft tissue of a patient’s arm instead of the intended vein.

This can occur during nuclear medicine injections, such as those administered for PET/CT scans.

“We’re thrilled to be working with Siemens Healthineers,” said Ron Lattanze, CEO of Lucerno Dynamics. “They are leaders in the nuclear medicine field, and [are] committed to improving patient experiences and expanding precision medicine.”

Founded in 2011, Lucerno’s Lara System monitors nuclear medicine injections and identifies possible contributing factors for the infiltrations such as techniques, tools, equipment positioning and patient characteristics.

Hospitals and clinics can also use the system to review possible contributing factors, make necessary and often simple changes, and reduce their infiltrations.

To date, it has been used “over 22,000 times” to monitor radiopharmaceutical administration, the company said.

In 2012, Lucerno was awarded a $47,000 NC IDEA. Two years later, the North Carolina Biotechnology Center awarded Lucerno a $150,000 loan to help it develop and test its technology, though the company only used half of it.

“Lucerno impressed NCBiotech with its innovative technology some years ago, and we were happy to support this development,” said Ken Janoski, senior director of investments for NCBiotech. “This is a major milestone on its commercial path, and this partnership with Siemens will make this innovative technology broadly available to nuclear medicine patients across the U.S. “

To date, the company has raised a total of $8.4 million, according to Crunchbase.