Text | Hu Xiangyun
Editor|Hairomirror
"In the current market environment, innovative medical devices must be driven by technology to solve clinical needs, which is a competition of hard technology." Recently, when talking about the development of the domestic surgical robot track, Dr. Lin Yucong, vice president and CMO of Arimadi, a developer of precision surgical navigation products, said to 36Kr.
Looking back at the medical industry in the past two years, surgical robots are undoubtedly one of the hottest tracks. In 2022 alone, at least 15 surgical robot products will be approved in the three major fields of laparoscopic, orthopedic and extraterrestrial. Behind the "wild run", high R&D and production costs have always plagued the marketing work of downstream enterprises in the industrial chain, resulting in the commercialization of surgical robots.
From the source, the upstream equipment core components are "stuck in the neck" by overseas companies, which is one of the main reasons why local manufacturers cannot reduce costs. Taking the optical positioning equipment necessary for surgical navigation products as an example, more than 90% of the global market is monopolized by Canadian enterprises NDI, high pricing, long procurement and maintenance cycles, coupled with the impact of changes in international relations in recent years, the domestic market has increasingly called for domestic replacement of optical positioning equipment.
In this context, Aremedi began to embark on the road of self-research for upstream components. The company was officially established in 2016, the R&D team is incubated in the School of Optoelectronics of Beijing Institute of Technology, and has more than 20 years of technology accumulation in the field of precision surgical navigation, which is basically synchronized with the world. Through close cooperation with Beijing Institute of Technology, Tsinghua University and other well-known universities, Aremedi has established a collaborative innovation model integrating production, learning and research, led the key R&D plans of the 13th and 14th Five-Year Plans, declared more than 100 national invention patents, mastered a number of core key technologies such as positioning sensing and photoelectric imaging, and is "one of the few enterprises in the industry that can have the strength to challenge overseas technology monopoly barriers".
Go upstream and do domestic replacement of core components
"It's not use, it's not use." When mentioning the technical blockade of overseas companies on the core components of surgical navigation, Lin Yucong used this expression to summarize the attitude of domestic downstream equipment manufacturers to monopoly issues.
With the popularization of digital systems for orthopedic surgery, doctors can grasp complex procedures faster and record and store surgical procedures. However, due to the late start of the domestic market, the technical barriers to the development of many upstream core components have not yet broken through, especially the optical positioning equipment with high development requirements for accuracy and stability, and faces a lot of challenges in software and hardware innovation capabilities such as algorithms, components, and production processes. Even TINAVI, known as the "first stock of domestic surgical robots", disclosed in its prospectus that the company's purchase amount of optical tracking cameras accounted for about 15% of the total purchase of raw materials for three consecutive years, once reaching more than 6.5 million yuan.
Illustration of Aremaidi optical positioning device
But in the surgical robot track, it is actually difficult for downstream companies to extend their "hands" up. Lin Yucong said that terminal manufacturers to solve the problem of hospital use scenarios, R & D team, technology accumulation more focus on algorithms and other software capabilities, even if parts are made, most of them can only be used by themselves. The technical capabilities required to do core components are more inclined to hardware development, "optoelectronics has always been a strong discipline of BIT, and a number of technologies have been applied to the military industry, and technology accumulation is here."
Take the company's current core product optical positioning equipment as an example, it plays the most important "eye" role in the surgical navigation system, through tracking optical balls to do precise positioning, the highest accuracy, "can achieve 0.1 mm of high-precision recognition", but must ensure that the tracking is not occluded, often used in ENT, orthopedics, extrajudicial fields.
"When we actually use it, we find that the products of overseas monopolies are not so perfect," Lin Yucong explains, "so we are committed to solving some of the defects of current products from the beginning of the principle design." For example, in terms of stability, the range of equipment can be positioned is a sector of about 0.9 meters to 3 meters, and each point in this range must achieve long-term accurate positioning; secondly, the equipment will heat up when used, how to ensure that the operating temperature of the equipment and the outside temperature change still maintain sub-millimeter accurate positioning, is also a very important point. ”
At the end of 2020, after three generations of hardware structure upgrades and seven generations of software iterations, Airemecti launched its own optical positioning and tracking equipment to the market. 36Kr learned that the company's existing "Swisseye SE" and "Raypu MAX" products are benchmarked NDI designs, "the only company that can achieve the same product strength as it", and its performance in accuracy, use and other test links is even "better than NDI".
With these products, Aremedi won the "2023 Surgical Robot Innovation Award" at the just-concluded first Global Surgical Robot Conference. Lin Yucong told 36Kr that after more than a year of warm-up and promotion, the company expects to serve medical robot manufacturers widely in the future.
Source: Arimadi
It is worth mentioning that in addition to optical positioning equipment, Aremedi also has a layout in electromagnetic positioning equipment, which is another type of tracking and positioning system common on the market. Although it is not as accurate as optical positioning, electromagnetic positioning is not afraid of occlusion, and is an essential core component of interventional procedures that require precise positioning such as cardiac electrophysiological three-dimensional ablation.
In addition, in terms of business model, the two types of positioning equipment are also different, optical positioning mainly relies on selling equipment, while electromagnetic positioning focuses on consumables.
Reduce the cost of system research and development and promote the domestic popularization of surgical robots
Monopoly means that its pricing must not follow the logic of cost plus, but the upper limit that customers can afford. Therefore, logically speaking, breaking through the technical blockade of core components is an important factor to promote the development of the domestic surgical robot industry, but due to the many difficulties in the overall commercialization of such products, how much can a single link help?
After all, for pure surgical navigation, the cost of a single core component may account for more than 80%, and the domestic substitution of upstream components can indeed play a role in reducing costs; But once you add in equally expensive robotic arms, the number may not be so optimistic.
Lin Yucong did not deny the problem. According to him, this is why Aremedi chooses to build a "more universal" research and development system in addition to single-point optical and electromagnetic positioning equipment, covering all aspects of software and hardware development and treatment plan design.
This system is named "MOST". Among them, M refers to the concepts of Mix-Reality, Magnetism, etc., emphasizing the functions of medical image analysis and augmented reality registration, which is necessary for surgical robots and preoperative planning, such as three-dimensional reconstruction of CT films after tumor, blood vessels, and nerve segmentation, and then intelligent surgical planning; O and S mainly emphasize hardware products, such as the aforementioned optical and electromagnetic positioning equipment, as well as various sensor development; T refers to treatment options, such as surgical work, simulation training software.
Illustration of the R&D system of Arimadi
"Around the entire MOST platform, it can be seen that although the development focus of Aremaidi is in the upstream of the industrial chain, its technical capabilities not only cover the development of core components, but also provide solutions around the entire process of intelligent surgery, and assist downstream manufacturers to promote the promotion and marketing of surgical robots more efficiently."
Lin Yucong further explained that for enterprises, if they want to win the first surgical robot three-type registration certificate, the cumulative cost of personnel, materials, testing and clinical costs is at least 50 million to 100 million. For those manufacturers who want to enter the robot track but are not willing to spend this money, the advantages of Aremaidi's "full-chain technology layout" can provide a complete set of solutions for commissioned development, greatly reducing the industry entry threshold, and helping it quickly enter the game through CDMO.
"When the production cost of core hardware and the overall research and development cost are reduced, it can promote the faster popularization of surgical robots in China, thereby promoting the faster development of the entire track." 36Kr learned that from the overall price point of view, compared with NDI, Arimedi has been able to "reduce about 1/3 of the space, but still maintain profitability".
According to reports, at present, the CDMO business of surgical robots of Airemedi has been recognized by many enterprise customers in the market, and has received tens of millions of orders.
Scientific and technological innovation, as the ballast stone of the economic development of major countries, escorts China's rise with heavy strength. Today, innovation is entering the "deep water area", and hard core technologies such as AI, chips, new energy, and biomedicine have become the mainstream direction of capital attention. From technology to business, the cycle of corporate profitability is lengthened, the hard model of entrepreneurial games is lit up, and those who end up need twelve points of bravery and responsibility.
The iterative story of hard technology is worth writing, and the journey of entrepreneurs is worth remembering. To this end, 36Kr launched the "Tech100" column, selecting 100 high-potential companies with hard technology content to record how they climbed the towering technical barriers, polished products that surprised the market, and gathered strength to achieve commercial success.
Tech100, a cross-section of innovation from hundreds of enterprises, sees the future to come.
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