Braillic, a two-year-old medtech start-up from Hong Kong, wants to bring augmented reality (AR) into the operating theatre.
The medical imagery that surgeons use to guide them in operations has hardly changed in decades, says Braillic’s Co-Founder and CEO Camroo Ahmed.
“Surgery is an inherently multi-dimensional task, but almost all the surgical image guidance systems are in 2D,” Mr Ahmed says. “Our ultimate aim is to remove a blind spot from surgery.”
Surgeons have a limited field of vision during operations, especially for minimally invasive procedures. Braillic’s new surgical tool ArNav – which stands for Augmented Reality Guided Surgical Navigation – can address this pain point by displaying 3D recreations of a patient’s internal anatomy via a dedicated headset.
This extra detail promises to make complex procedures safer and more precise.
Braillic is already marketing a training platform that uses ArNav’s hardware and software to simulate multiple neurosurgeries to help medical students and residents practice surgical procedures.
A public hospital in Hong Kong that helped test and refine the system is currently in discussion about becoming the start-up’s first customer.
Medical institutions in Mainland China and Singapore have also expressed interest in the start-up’s AR-guided training platform.
The ultimate goal, however, is for ArNav to play a role at the operating table itself.
Braillic is targeting 1,000 ArNav assisted surgeries by the end of 2025.
To accomplish this goal, he will need to secure two sets of regulatory approval, while winning over risk-averse hospitals and medical professionals.
Braillic hopes to secure approval from Hong Kong’s Department of Health to start clinical trials on patients by early 2025.
Once these have been completed, he will apply to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to sell ArNav commercially.
That sales push will start in Asia-Pacific rather than the US. An all-clear from the FDA, however, will significantly speed up market approvals elsewhere.
Braillic is seeking US$1 million in funding, primarily to hire two more engineers and to pay for consultants who can help with Braillic’s FDA application.
The company has largely been bootstrapped so far, mostly relying on friends and family as well as angel investors for funding.
He is also working with the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC), which is introducing Braillic to manufacturers, while arranging market exposure through trade fairs. The company took part in the Hong Kong Pavilion at the China Hi-Tech Fair, which was held in Shenzhen in November.
Braillic is one of 10 winners of the 2024 edition of Start-up Express, an entrepreneurship development programme run by HKTDC that provides comprehensive support to start-ups in terms of branding, publicity and market expansion.
The Braillic team developed ArNav with Dr Leanne Chan, an associate professor at the City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK), and Dr Peter Woo, a neurosurgeon at Hong Kong’s Prince of Wales Hospital.
Mr Ahmed, a former electrical engineering student at CityUHK, started working with Dr Chan and Dr Woo when he studied computer vision for his final-year project.
The three continued to work together after Mr Ahmed’s graduation, laying the groundwork for Braillic.
Many people have already used crude forms of AR – an interactive technology that combines real-world and computer-generated visuals.
AR requires exponentially more computing power to be an effective and safe surgical aid however, making it a largely unexplored tool in surgery.
ArNav must deliver a major improvement on current practices to be accepted.
Braillic is focusing on procedures, for which ArNav promises to make the biggest difference, starting with brain surgery. Surgical challenges increase considerably, when dealing with intricately layered organs.
“If your product is 5% better, I don’t think that would make any difference,” Mr Ahmed says.
“But if you can provide something that has a 25% improvement on current procedures, I think the industry will accept it. At the end of the day, it comes down to product quality.”