Having spent many late nights together in the operating room, Adam Rakestraw and John Black knew they were passionate about their individual work as sales representatives in the medical devices field — but neither of them ever imagined it would lead to a groundbreaking joint venture.

“For many years, we would work together in the OR in various capacities late at night, drinking day-old coffee,” recalls Rakestraw. “During that time, we struck up a mutual respect for how each of us handled cases; I really wanted to be clinically involved rather than just be a salesman.”

Years later, Rakestraw was one of the first people Black called after he was introduced to a revolutionary technology via the Cleveland Clinic that essentially held “the promise of X-ray vision for surgeons” using augmented reality — but Rakestraw wasn’t as sure about its potential.

“I’ve been in probably 6,000 imaging-based procedures, and I knew every imaging company out there had been trying their best to merge different technologies to give that perception of depth,” says Rakestraw. “With a loose term like ‘X-ray vision,’ I was very skeptical about how accurate the capabilities were.”

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