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ai is playing a greater role in the medical industry. on september 16, during the 2024 china international fair for trade in services, a beijing business daily reporter had an exclusive interview with zhang yiling, chairman of beijing changmugu medical technology co., ltd. with the help of ai technology, robots can become the "brain", "eyes" and "hands" of orthopedic surgeons, improving the quality of surgery while also allowing high-quality medical resources to reach the grassroots level. today, changmugu's independently developed world's first ai+robot artificial intelligence orthopedic surgical robot ropa equipped with artificial intelligence deep learning is officially on the market.

the emergence of "ai+" has completely broken the time and space barriers of technology and region in the traditional medical field, allowing high-quality medical resources to transcend geographical boundaries. the application and potential of robots in the medical field are becoming increasingly prominent, which also indicates that the medical industry will usher in more innovations and changes.

5-10 minutes tailor-made 3d surgical plan

the scope of surgery is extensive and complex, with a high risk of intraoperative and postoperative complications. surgeons are also called "dancers on the edge of a knife." as a type of orthopedic surgery, joint replacement surgery has extremely high requirements for the precision of the operation due to the complex internal structure, and it is very dependent on the doctor's experience and skills. for example, knee replacement surgery requires doctors with 20 to 30 years of experience to complete, and patients often choose to have it done in a tertiary hospital.

in order to solve the above problems, changmugu began to explore orthopedic surgical robots six years ago. with the help of artificial intelligence technology, robots have become the "brain", "eyes" and "hands" of orthopedic surgeons. according to zhang yiling, changmugu's independently developed ai+robot artificial intelligence orthopedic surgical robot ropa, the world's first artificial intelligence deep learning orthopedic surgical robot, has been officially launched. the surgical control accuracy of this surgical robot has exceeded the sub-millimeter level, which is only 0.6 mm, which is more than twice that of similar orthopedic robots at home and abroad. at the same time, only a ct scan of the patient before the operation can help doctors accurately develop an individualized three-dimensional surgical plan in 5-10 minutes, shortening the operation time, reducing surgical risks, and alleviating patient pain.

"take knee replacement surgery as an example. this is a level 4 high-difficulty surgery. generally, it takes a doctor with 20 to 30 years of experience to complete such an operation. the doctor needs to rely on his experience to select a dozen models that the patient may need from hundreds of hypotheses. in order to open the patient's joints during the operation to truly see the situation, he can choose a prosthesis that is relatively suitable for the patient." zhang yiling told the beijing business daily reporter.

let ai and robots become the intelligent "brain", "eyes" and "hands" of orthopedic surgeons to solve the long-standing pain points in joint replacement surgery.

zhang yiling said that the surgical robot's "digital brain" has super-strong underlying learning and data calculation and processing capabilities, which can accurately design and visualize the model, size, surgical osteotomy position, thickness and prosthesis placement angle of the artificial prosthesis in three dimensions, allowing doctors to simulate the entire surgical process before the operation and have a clear idea of ​​what is going on.

the "digital eye"'s sub-millimeter precise optical positioning can monitor and track changes in the patient's intraoperative position in real time, helping doctors break through bottlenecks such as limited field of view and operational blind spots in traditional surgery, thereby improving surgical safety and accuracy.

the robotic arm of the artificial intelligence orthopedic surgery robot can simulate the doctor's hand as a "digital hand". with the independently developed intelligent follow-up technology, it ensures the precise execution of every key step during the operation. the robotic arm's 3d spatial scanning technology scans and reconstructs the surgical area to achieve fully automatic and efficient positioning.

"a complex operation may have taken more than three hours in the past, but now with the help of our preoperative planning and standardized processes, the operation time can be shortened to about half an hour." zhang yiling introduced that this robot can not only improve the quality of surgery, but also make it possible for high-quality medical resources to be transferred to the grassroots level.

“replicate the medical experience of tertiary hospitals to lower-level hospitals”

my country is a hard-hit area for osteoarthritis. epidemiological surveys show that there are 140 million osteoarthritis patients in my country, and the prevalence of osteoporosis among people over 50 years old is nearly 20%, and the rate of low bone mass is nearly 50%. however, there are only 15,500 practicing physicians in orthopedic hospitals, and even fewer doctors with rich surgical experience.

at present, the shortage of medical resources in my country is still prominent. "the training period for orthopedic doctors is very long, and good doctors need to go through a lot of surgeries, even failed surgeries." zhang yiling said frankly that in the short term, the industry faces a huge challenge, that is, it is impossible to quickly train a large number of doctors with top expert surgical skills. how to optimize the allocation of medical resources under the existing conditions and improve the medical level of grassroots hospitals has become an urgent problem to be solved.

in traditional orthopedic surgery, doctors mainly rely on their rich experience and intuition accumulated over many years to perform surgical operations. this method of relying on personal experience means that the success of the operation depends largely on the doctor's professional skills and experience level. however, this also puts higher demands on young doctors, who need to go through a long period of study and practice to gradually accumulate enough experience and intuition to cope with various complex surgical situations.

with the introduction and application of medical robotics technology, the replicability of surgical experience becomes possible.

"our goal is to replicate the medical experience of tertiary hospitals." zhang yiling told the beijing business daily reporter that the robot uses artificial intelligence deep computing and learning technology, combined with the rich surgical experience of clinicians, and uses medical image big data for training and deep learning. it can provide patients with accurate anatomical parameters and lower limb alignment before surgery, thereby tailoring a set of intelligent, individualized and accurate surgical plans. this personalized surgical planning makes the product not limited by the professional level of the operator, making the originally difficult-to-replicate high-quality medical technology and the surgical experience of great experts a reality, and providing a replicable execution plan for the improvement of primary medical technology and the balance of high-quality medical resources.

the emergence of "ai+" has completely broken the time and space barriers of technology and region in the traditional medical field, allowing high-quality medical resources to cross geographical boundaries and sink to grassroots areas. this not only improves the accessibility and convenience of medical services, but also greatly improves the utilization efficiency of medical resources, making the distribution of medical resources more fair and reasonable.

policies and markets provide two-way support

as a product of the deep integration of cutting-edge technology and the medical and health field, the application of surgical robots has become more and more widespread. they can not only improve the accuracy of surgery and reduce human errors, but also reduce the physical burden of doctors to a certain extent and improve surgical efficiency. in addition, the application of surgical robots also provides new possibilities for telemedicine, allowing high-quality medical resources to transcend geographical restrictions and benefit more patients. therefore, both medical institutions and investors are full of expectations and confidence in the development prospects of this field.

according to data from the data service platform "yizhuang shusheng" under the china medical equipment association, the registration of orthopedic surgical robot products in my country has experienced explosive growth since 2022. as of january 2024, a total of 38 orthopedic surgical robots have been approved in my country (27 domestic brands and 11 imported brands). in 2023 alone, 9 companies entered the field of orthopedic surgical robots, with as many as 14 approved products.

in recent years, the state and local governments and competent departments have introduced many supporting policies for the development of surgical robots. in january 2023, the ministry of industry and information technology, the national health commission and other 17 departments issued the "robot +" application action implementation plan, which clearly proposed to accelerate the breakthrough of robots and medical artificial intelligence in basic theory, common key technologies, innovative applications, etc., and promote the accelerated application of new technologies and new products such as artificial intelligence-assisted diagnosis systems, robot 5g remote surgery, and brain-computer interface-assisted rehabilitation systems. promote the application of robots in hospital rehabilitation, telemedicine, health and epidemic prevention and other scenarios. strengthen the application of robots in the overall course service system of pre-hospital patient management, in-hospital diagnosis and treatment, and post-hospital rehabilitation tracking, to help build smart medical care.

with the strong support of national policies, my country's orthopedic surgical robots have made great progress. according to yizhuang shusheng's calculations, the sales amount of orthopedic surgical robots in my country will be about 574 million yuan in 2023, with a compound growth rate of 20.9% in the past four years. with the rise of 5g remote surgery, the policy tilt is conducive to the sinking of orthopedic surgical robot resources, and my country's orthopedic surgical robots have broad prospects. yizhuang shusheng predicts that the sales of orthopedic surgical robots in my country will increase fourfold in five years and will reach 2.13 billion yuan by 2028.

zhang yiling said that the development trend of medical devices is moving towards intelligence. among them, medical robots, as a product that integrates multidisciplinary knowledge such as medicine, mechanical engineering, automatic control, information technology and bionics, represent cutting-edge technology in this field. in future medical care, artificial intelligence will play a key role and become an important assistant in the medical industry. smarter medical equipment, more comprehensive interconnection, and medical models combined with artificial intelligence are expected to significantly improve the work efficiency of hospitals and the diagnosis and treatment capabilities of doctors. its ultimate goal is to promote the improvement of the health level of the whole people.

beijing business daily reporter wang yinhao