*Dr. Christoff Heunis*is a biomedical and mechatronics engineer (PhD, University of Twente) and the founder & CEO of Flux Robotics, a magnetically guided robotic system that steers a guidewire through the body from outside the patient. It started with a single phone call while he was an engineering student in South Africa — a best friend’s mother had a stroke, and there were only a handful of surgeons on an entire continent who could treat it.
In this conversation, Dr. Christoff Heunis reveals:
⬛ Why one phone call — a friend’s mother’s stroke — set the course of his life
⬛ How an external robotic magnet can pull a guidewire around the tightest, most complex angles a surgeon’s hands can’t reach
⬛ Why surgeons say they don’t want to be replaced — yet “do want to press a button and then leave, and when I come back, the surgery is over”
⬛ The first real-world use case: misaligned fenestrations, CTOs and the angles no combination of guide catheters can make
⬛ How Flux got the FDA to confirm a 510(k) pathway — and why the predicate they found changes everything
⬛ What Stereotaxis acquiring Robocath signals about the commercial future of magnetic surgery
⬛ How he raised €3.2M in non-dilutive funding before giving up a single point of equity
Follow Dr. Christoff Heunis:
LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/christoff-heunis/
Flux Robotics — https://fluxrobots.com
Resources mentioned in this episode:
🏢 Flux Robotics — https://fluxrobots.com
🏢 Stereotaxis — https://www.stereotaxis.com
🏢 Robocath — https://www.robocath.com/
🏢 Intuitive / da Vinci Surgical System — https://www.intuitive.com
🎓 University of Twente — https://www.utwente.nl/en/
🎓 Stellenbosch University — https://www.sun.ac.za/english
🏛 RVO — Netherlands Enterprise Agency — https://www.rvo.nl
🏛 NWO — Dutch Research Council — https://www.nwo.nl/en
🏛 Interreg (EU cross-border funding) — https://www.interreg.eu
💸 NextGen Ventures — https://www.nextgenventures.nl
💸 Future Tech Ventures — https://futuretechventures.nl
🎵 Eminem — “Lose Yourself” — https://open.spotify.com/track/5Z01UMMf7V1o0MzF86s6WJ
🎵 “Soms” — Christoff’s Afrikaans rap single, with his brother Daniel (name only)
