$33.7 million for innovation: Philips develops AI-driven robotics to save stroke patients

Stroke is a race against time, which is why we closely follow developments that could make emergency care more accessible. MIOT is the official distributor of Philips in Ukraine, so we are paying particular attention to this news, which could change the future of stroke treatment.

 

Philips has received a grant of up to US$33.7 million from ARPA-H (the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) under the Autonomous Interventions and Robotics (AIR) program. The goal is to develop technologies for remote and increasingly automated endovascular procedures, which will help expand access to advanced stroke care.

 

Why it matters

 

 

Thrombectomy is a minimally invasive procedure that, when performed in time, can reverse the effects of a stroke and prevent disability. But access to it is very limited: in the US, about 335,000 patients a year are eligible for thrombectomy, yet only about 12% receive it; more than half of Americans live more than an hour's drive from a hospital where the procedure can be performed; worldwide, fewer than 3% of patients with large vessel occlusion receive mechanical thrombectomy, even though stroke remains the second leading cause of death.

 

What Philips is developing

 

The company is developing robotic procedure automation on the Azurion platform for image-guided therapy. The project covers endovascular navigation, robotic instrument control, visual support during the intervention, workflow automation and remote interventions. The technologies are being developed to support the physician, with autonomy increasing gradually under expert supervision.

 

Bert van Meurs, head of the image-guided therapy business at Philips, explained the goal: expert-level care should not depend on geography or a shortage of specialists. According to him, the aim is not to replace experts but to make their expertise scalable and accessible.

 

For Ukrainian medicine, such technological developments are of particular importance. Access to modern equipment and the ability to perform complex interventions quickly and accurately directly affect the quality of care and patient outcomes.

 

At Medical Individually Optimal Technologies (MIOT), we strive to be not only a supplier of medical equipment but also a partner for Ukrainian doctors and healthcare institutions in adopting modern technologies. We follow global developments to understand which solutions can already be useful for the Ukrainian healthcare system today and what opportunities they open up for the future.

 

As the official distributor of Philips in Ukraine, we are proud to represent the company's technologies on the Ukrainian market and to make advanced solutions in medical imaging and interventional medicine more accessible to our specialists.

 

It is through such innovations that the medicine of the future takes shape: more technological, more precise and more accessible to the patient.

 

You can read the full article here.