Artificial intelligence is playing a greater role in clinical surgery. At the 2024 CIFTIS that ended in September, ROPA, the world's first orthopedic surgical robot equipped with artificial intelligence deep learning technology, became a star, attracting merchants from all over the world to consult, including the mayor of Göttingen, Germany.
Why does ROPA shine? In the R&D center of Beijing Changmugu Medical Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Changmugu"), which develops and produces the surgical robot, the reporter found the answer - relying on artificial intelligence, doctors can design treatment plans through three-dimensional modeling and precise assistance of robots, so that the "closed-book examination" of the surgery previously completed by experience becomes an "open-book examination" of surgery with confidence.
There are many pain points in traditional orthopedic surgery: for example, in the preoperative planning stage, it is necessary to rely on experience to conceive the position of the prosthesis, and there is uncertainty in the operation; The intraoperative field of vision is limited, and the "blind spot" will increase the risk of surgery; Precise force control for surgery is also a challenge, and any slight deviation can lead to postoperative complications.
ROPA, which precisely coordinates the "brain", "eye" and "hand", solves these pain points - the surgical simulation software is like a "digital brain", which can help doctors formulate a personalized 3D surgical plan within 5 to 10 minutes with only the patient's CT before surgery; Precise optical positioning is like a "digital intelligent eye", which monitors and tracks the changes of the patient's position during the operation in real time, helping doctors break through the limitations of traditional surgery and the blind spot of operation. The intelligent follow-up technology is like a "digital intelligent hand", and every key step in the surgical process can be accurately executed, achieving a breakthrough in surgical accuracy at the sub-millimeter level.
"A doctor can do more than 1,000 orthopedic joint replacement surgeries a year, and about 20,000 or 30,000 in a lifetime." Zhang Yiling, chairman of the company, said that with the blessing of artificial intelligence 3D surgical simulation, the artificial intelligence system can help hundreds of thousands of patients regain their health in a year.
The birth of ROPA fills the global technology gap in the application of artificial intelligence 3D surgical simulation in the field of orthopedic robotics. But to the surprise of many peers, the company that has achieved a "zero breakthrough" was still a start-up team of only 3 people more than 5 years ago.
In 2015, Zhang Yiling was studying for a doctorate at Harvard University in the United States, at that time, the "da Vinci" surgical robot developed by Intuitive Medical in the United States was in full swing, and the Mako orthopedic robot of the orthopedic leader Stryker was also becoming more and more mature.
"At that time, no company in China had approved the marketing of orthopedic surgical robots, let alone industrial development." Zhang Yiling felt a strong sense of crisis and mission, "This is a competition between countries. Zhang Yiling said. He made the same choice as Dr. Liu Xingyu from Tsinghua University.
The two young men hit it off with Lei Ming of Stanford University, one of Baidu's founding seven musketeers, determined to make a Chinese artificial intelligence orthopedic surgical robot. In 2017, Changmu Valley was officially established, and the origin of the name is taken from the alma maters of the three founders - Harvard University Changmu Medical District, Tsinghua University Mizuki Tsinghua University and Stanford University Silicon Valley. In 2018, the founding team returned to China and landed in Zhongguancun, Beijing.
Under the ambition, it is to cross the river by feeling the stones. "Going from zero to one is the hardest. The application of artificial intelligence technology in the field of robot design, not to mention that the Chinese have not done it at that time, there is no such thing in the world. Zhang Yiling said that although the application is new, it is feasible: orthopedics relies heavily on medical images, and artificial intelligence deep learning technology is very suitable for this kind of image processing. For example, in CT modeling, after the company's team manually sketched more than 10 million images one by one, it began to introduce artificial intelligence algorithms to guide machine learning to automatically identify the femur, tibia, and fibula.
On the one hand, the team spent three years marking more than 100,000 patients and tens of millions of medical images one by one, conducting machine training, and on the other hand, constantly confirming the correctness of the robot algorithm and the feasibility of preoperative planning with clinical experts. After continuous tackling, running-in, and tuning, the rich surgical experience of top joint surgery experts has been transformed into standard algorithms for deep learning of robots. It wasn't until clinical trials repeatedly showed that Changmugu's artificial intelligence 3D surgical simulation software could improve the accuracy of orthopedic surgery to 97%, and Zhang Yiling felt that the dawn of victory was already in sight.
In 2022, AIJOINT, the orthopedic surgery planning software of Changmugu, was approved to enter the green channel for special approval of innovative medical devices by the State Food and Drug Administration as the "first in China". On October 24, 2023, this software was approved for the registration of innovative medical device products issued by the National Medical Products Administration (NMPA), becoming the first approved Class III registration certificate for innovative medical devices in the category of AI-assisted orthopedic therapy in China. On August 5, 2024, AIJOINT received certification from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Talking about the company's next sprint goal, Zhang Yiling focused on commercialization, and Beijing became a key city. "I believe that in the future, robots will become a standard in the operating room." Zhang Yiling said that just as mobile phone navigation has become the standard for travel, with the help of the artificial intelligence orthopedic surgery robot system, it will be possible for doctors to have a highly accurate surgical "navigation map".