Project summary

Based on 30 years of rigorous R&D, the team has identified a possible means of achieving highly accurate navigation with quick turnarounds for surgical use at a fraction of the cost of conventional systems.

What is a surgical navigator?

A surgical navigator / surgical navigation system (often abbreviated as "SNS") is the GPS of surgery: A device (the navigator) is tracked by some means and its movements are converted into machine instruction. When the device is pressed against a patient's anatomy - such as a leg, chest, or head - the patient's medical images are projected onto a screen from that location and along the axis that the device projects.

Why are you making this?

This breakthrough technology allowed for modern image-guided surgery but modern systems are complex, expensive, and their real-world accuracy is often considerably worse than laboratory-confirmed results. As such, they have failed to penetrate in countries where they are needed most, and are to this day relatively exotic even in rich countries.

We want to offer hospitals the ability to possess not just one, two, or three surgical navigation systems, but dozens, so that surgeons can actively use them and develop new methods. We also want to make them "repairable" so that a hospital can upgrade to a new system when it is warranted, instead of being locked into vendor SaaS.

Why Manifund? Why a grant? Isn't there money for this?

We are very early in development and success will require genuinely new scientific insights, which we believe are attainable but the risk profile is not tolerable to traditional funding sources.

What are this project's goals? How will you achieve them?

5/6ths drop in surgical navigation system cost of purchase and ownership, introduction of surgical navigation technology to a wider base of users including jaw surgery where existing systems have failed.

This will be achieved based on novel sensor fusion that we've identified.

How will this funding be used?

Primarily to fund PhD studies and university publications with a Finnish university hospital, which will eventually progress to commercially viable applications. If grants prove a successful way to fund the effort, we'd like to make parts of it open source such that the technology is made available faster in less well-funded hospitals around the world.

We aim to demonstrate a prototype in use at a European university hospital within 12-18 months of funding, after which we will seek funding for commercialization. Depending on a Grant-giver's outlook, we are open to considering alternate approaches and business model.

Who is on your team? What's your track record on similar projects?

Mikael Koivukangas, 2nd-generation founder and humanist, know-it-all of medtech.

John Koivukangas, pioneer in neuronavigation and one of the OGs of the industry, introduced the world's first accurate surgical navigators [1] and lead research groups that invented a host of critical innovations that define surgical robotics today, such as the sterilization management system employed by most if not all of them, and is utilized in other fields such as satellite assembly in clean room environments [2].

[1] https://thejns.org/focus/view/journals/neurosurg-focus/27/3/article-pE11.xml

[2] https://patents.google.com/patent/US5413573A

The past is no guarantee of future success - but it does demonstrate a focus on mission.

What are the most likely causes and outcomes if this project fails?

The project will fail if the identified means of navigation fails in practice, economically or as a concept. We might be too early, the kinds of sensors we require may prove inadequate, and we may lack the appropriate insight or skill set necessary. Further, our own biases and assumptions may prove incorrect.

The history of technological innovation is replete with failure.

We hope that in the case of failure, our work may go on to be utilized by others if any valuable insight is uncovered. All publications, patents, and other knowledge will eventually enter the public domain.

How much money have you raised in the last 12 months, and from where?

None.