ARPA-H funded teams to transform life-saving stroke interventions with autonomous robotic surgeries

Agency program will expand access to specialized procedures nationwide and reduce the long-term burden of stroke-related impairment 

The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), today announced the teams receiving contract awards from its Autonomous Interventions and Robotics (AIR) program. Stroke care is a race against the clock with every 10-minute delay adding 39 days of disability and about $10,000 in healthcare costs. Yet for half of Americans, an advanced care center is more than an hour away. This game-changing robotic surgery program will close that gap by developing autonomous robots to deliver less invasive and more affordable surgical care anywhere in the United States, not just in highly specialized medical centers.

“Each year, hundreds of thousands of Americans suffer strokes caused by clots that block large blood vessels in the brain, yet only about 12% of those who need the most effective treatment — thrombectomy — receive it. Too many are left to face lifelong consequences, including disability, memory loss, depression, and chronic pain,” said AIR Program Manager Ileana Hancu, Ph.D. “Through AIR, ARPA-H is mobilizing the nation’s most advanced technological and clinical expertise to revolutionize surgical care and develop curative stroke treatments for patients.”

AIR advances two ambitious and critical technical areas (TAs) in surgical care. First, performer teams will develop autonomous robotic systems capable of performing parts of — or entire — surgical interventions independently, with the goal of making curative stroke care available to patients nationwide, regardless of location. Second, AIR will drive the development of microbots (tiny mechanical, electronic, or hybrid devices that can carry out a wide range of procedures on their own) pushing healthcare toward a future of less invasive, more accessible care without the need for specialized equipment.

Performer teams are led by:

TA1: Endovascular robotics to increase the availability of curative stroke surgery

Siemens Healthineers: The team will develop an autonomous endovascular surgical system by integrating adapted designs of commercial components, fluoroscopic imaging, and parallel algorithms for physics- and reinforcement learning-based navigation.

Philips North America, LLC: The team will combine existing image-guided therapy infrastructure with a multi-channel, fluid-driven steerable catheter and innovative imitation learning algorithms to create a robot capable of autonomously and dexterously performing interventional procedures.

Magnendo: The team will develop an autonomous endovascular robot that uses a robotically maneuvered magnet to steer a novel guidewire through a patient's vasculature. The robot’s position inside the body is continuously triangulated by fusing preoperative images with real-time scans.

University of California, San Diego (UCSD): The team will develop a flexible, soft “growing robot” that extrudes through a patient’s vasculature to safely reach the brain and perform mechanical thrombectomy.

Kitware, Inc.: The team will provide a virtual simulation and validation testbed for the four robots developed by Siemens Healthineers; Philips North America, LLC; Magnendo; and UCSD. All data and software will become publicly available, simplifying the regulatory path for other companies in this space.

TA2: Microbots to improve procedure safety and accessibility

Stanford University: The team will develop and clinically translate M3bot, an intravascular, untethered magnetic helical device that autonomously debulks and extracts blood clots for the treatment of ischemic stroke.

University of California, Berkeley: The team is building a tiny, five-segment crawling robot (about the size of a small pen cap) that can inch its way through the body to take tissue samples from the sinuses and to navigate fluid-filled spaces in the brain to reduce dangerous pressure buildup. The middle segments are powered by a novel magnet-driven pump that controls micro-hydraulic suction cups as feet.

The agency’s commitment is up to $175.3 million over 5 years. Performer awards vary in funding amount per awardee and are contingent upon each team meeting aggressive and accelerated research milestones. At 24 months, AIR teams will demonstrate autonomous capabilities in a benchtop or biological model. At 60 months, AIR teams will demonstrate fully autonomous surgical interventions in realistic models, animals, or human cadavers. If successful, AIR will revolutionize surgery by enabling robots to perform entire interventions without direct human input.

Learn more about AIR on its program page.