Dopl Technologies is developing an ultrasound robot for remote imaging, as depicted in this AI-generated illustration. [Image courtesy of Dopl Technologies]
But the Bothell, Washington-based startup plans to eventually return to its minimally invasive roots for an even bigger impact on patients.
We spoke with Dopl Technologies co-founder and CEO Ryan James, a former Nvidia medical AI engineer, about the technology ahead of his announcement that the startup closed its $6.3 million seed round.
August 2026 MDO Min-Vasive Medtech Webinar Series: Ask James your own questions and learn about the company’s minimally invasive experiments and future in a live interview on Aug. 19
MDO: How did you get into healthcare and to where you are today?
James: “I’ve always been passionate about healthcare. My family has done a lot of work in the healthcare domain, particularly in the community that I grew up in, Kalamazoo, Michigan. They’re both physicians. I fell in love with technology at a really early age, so I went to the University of Michigan for computer science, came out to Seattle, worked at Microsoft and Nvidia, did a PhD in health informatics, and all of that was really about establishing a solid foundation to understand and develop technology. And then I tie that back to my passion to help people access care where and when they need it. I met two physicians at University of Washington who were mission aligned. They understood the problem firsthand, and I had the technical capabilities to build solutions, and the rest is history.”
What are you developing and what’s special about it?
James: “Dopl enables remote robotic and autonomous care delivery. We’re starting with ultrasound, which is a top-of-the-funnel diagnostic. Patients need to get scanned and diagnosed before they get treated. The problem is that sonographers are maldistributed. Particularly in rural areas, they’re unavailable because of workforce shortages, so we’re developing Traverse, which is a remote robotic ultrasound system that enables a remote sonographer to control a seven-degree-of-freedom robotic arm holding an ultrasound probe to comfortably and safely scan patients in remote areas, to dramatically improve their time to diagnosis, and improve that hospital’s access to care, as well as the hospital’s economics. We’re really excited about what we’re doing, where we are in the market and this time in history, which is the perfect time for what we’re building.”
July 2026 MDO Magazine: Read our annual robotics issue
You’re using off-the-shelf hardware and say your platform is device agnostic, so what’s your special sauce?
James: “Dopl’s special sauce is the software and connectivity that connects the remote specialist to devices at the patient bedside and allows them to securely and safely control those devices to deliver care to patients. We work with off-the-shelf six- and seven-degree-of-freedom cobots, off-the-shelf six-degree-of-freedom haptic controllers, off-the-shelf cameras — both traditional RGB and RGBD cameras — and off-the-shelf pressure sensors. We build a little bit of hardware in-house like the cart, and the holder that attaches an off-the-shelf ultrasound machines probe to our robot. But we also support off-the-shelf ultrasound machines as well. So our special sauce really is the software, the connectivity, the infrastructure that powers telerobotic and autonomous care delivery, and then we learn because we’re we acquire all of this data from each device and we’re transmitting it during a telerobotic exam. We’re able to learn from that data over time to make our system more intelligent, introduce semi-autonomous features to the sonographer, and eventually perform these whole exams fully autonomously.”
For customers, is there any of their own equipment they’ll get to use with your robotics platform?
James: “Eventually, they’ll be able to take their systems and connect them to our machines. When we have our initial market release, we’re selling a full system to them. So we’ll support one robot, one controller, one ultrasound machine, and a set of cameras. Then over time we’ll expand to support every device in those categories with a turnkey. We really want our our initial market release to be turnkey and well controlled to make sure we understand how this needs to be rolled out.
What’s been the biggest technical challenge and how have you solved it?
Dopl Technologies co-founder and CEO Ryan James [Photo courtesy of Dopl Technologies]
“That includes haptic feedback. As they’re moving their remote controller, it actually feels like the controller’s touching the patient and they’re moving over the patient’s topology. And we’ve removed latency. We have a zero latency haptic experience for the sonographer based on our computer vision models on the patient side. We use computer vision to understand the topology of the patient, which is used for making sure we have a gentle probe contact touch and feel as we scan, as well as making sure the robot is always in a safe work zone while we scan as well. And then of course, we use the force torque sensors on the robot and the pressure sensor, the end effector, to modulate force and provide that really soft touch. It feels like an apple is resting on your chest when we’re doing a cardiac scan.”
What’s the opportunity you’re going after?
James: “Our goal is to help everybody. There’s 5 billion people globally who don’t have the level of access to care that they need. In the U.S., there’s 60 million people who live in rural communities that have limited access. But the truth is that even in urban areas, we have limited access. Folks are waiting at University of Washington around the corner three weeks to three months to get the ultrasound exams that they need because there’s a backlog and workforce issues. What we’re doing is truly distributing that care to help not just the 60 million people in in rural areas, but the the 300 million people across the nation, and then we’ll expand globally.”
What other potential applications are there?
James: “Fundamentally, we’re building a hardware-agnostic platform for telerobotic and autonomous care delivery. We actually started with a minimally invasive procedure and pivoted to ultrasound because it was the right choice for our company. But we’re applying the same concept, which is we have a remote specialist, we connect them to a set of off-the-shelf devices and allow them to perform their procedure remotely. That concept can be applied to minimally invasive procedures, laparoscopic procedures, diagnostic exams, and our goal is over the next 10 to 30 years to help the industry move toward a world where every procedure, every exam, every procedure is performed telerobotically and autonomously, and the infrastructure that that everything’s going to need is a platform like Dopl’s that provides that connectivity, that security, that safety.”
You started with minimally invasive cardiac ablation, right? How did those go and when did you decide to pivot to ultrasound?
James: “They went fantastic. We’ve done cardiac catheter ablations in rural hospitals remotely. The main reason we pivoted is we were talking to our customers and they said, ‘This is great. We we would love to have the expertise of an electrophysiologist in our hospital, but we just need basic access to ultrasound because our patients can’t even be diagnosed for a cardiac catheter ablation because we we don’t have ultrasound to diagnose them.’ That was the primary reason we pivoted. We’re starting with the greatest need, and then we’re we’re going to move up the chain from there. … We did a ton of research in minimally invasive. I think it was five to seven years.”
Do you see potential in telerobotic stroke care?
James: “Absolutely. I think everything is going to move in this direction.”
I hear it’s a tough environment for fundraising. Any advice for other startups?
James: “It can be challenging, but you’ve just got to stick with it. There are a lot of people out there who have capital who are investing in medtech. You’ve got to find people like yourself who are passionate about this field and really want to make a difference — and of course, make a lot of money doing it. As long as you can show the big opportunity and how your company is different and that you can reach that opportunity, the money’s there to raise. And then it’s all about execution at that point.”
Read more from this interview about Dopl’s haptics technology and how the startup tackled the latency challenge, and join us Aug. 18-20 for the MDO Min-Vasive Medtech webinar series of live interviews with James and other medical device experts who can offer tips and advice to help other device developers innovate in minimally invasive systems and procedures.
