6 minute read
Fixing the little things
Healthcare World’s Sarah Cartledge speaks to Moises Barbera Ramos, CEO and Co-Founder of DrillSurgeries, about his revolutionary solution enabling better patient care in orthopaedics
Sometimes you don’t need to set out trying to fix all the wrongs in the world. An unachievable vision is all too o en a pitfall for startups and big businesses alike. Occasionally it is the simplest of problems that requires a solution and achieving it can be tremendously beneficial not only for the company but also for the customers (in this case, patients). Moises Barbera Ramos, a 23-year-old scientist and entrepreneur from Spain, identified an orthopaedic surgery solution that nobody else had recognised. Although he wasn’t the first to recognise the problem, he was the first to see how it could be solved by AI. His company Drill Surgeries is a young and vibrant startup in the medical device sector, driven to improve how Intramedullary Nailing surgeries are performed worldwide. His innovative tool facilitates how surgeonsachieve distal enclosure/locking during the surgery, reducing time and X-ray impact on patients and medical sta .
His success is no doubt due to his incredibly impressive portfolio at such a young age – an MSc in Physics at the University of Liverpool was followed by an internship CERN, the home of the Large Hadron Collider, developing algorithms for big data analysis. Then came JP Morgan Chase where he worked on programs to enable quicker execution of trades, and XJTLU in China, working on hand-tracking mechanisms for driverless cars.
Identifying the problem
However, Moises is no stranger to healthcare. His father was a salesman for medical devices, and he fondly recalls joining his Dad at work, venturing from hospital to hospital back home in Valencia, unconsciously absorbing the issues and challenges within the sector. So healthcare is in his blood. Within orthopaedics, a process called ‘intramedullary nailing’ has been used for a very long time. Invented by Gerhard Küntscher during World War II for treating femur fractures, this procedure enabled patients to resume their activities quickly, sometimes in only a few weeks, as opposed to the months of inactivity that a plaster cast would necessitate.
Since then, intramedullary nails have been in constant use. They are no longer restricted only to breaks of the femur, but have been adopted for usage in other fractures, such as the arms. As they share the load with the bone itself, patients are able to be active and use their broken appendage far quicker - resulting in less risk of muscle atrophy, and a much quicker recovery time. However, this procedure is not simple. Performing it requires pre-operation X-rays, followed by a long invasive surgery, and post-operation X-rays - exposing the patient to a sizeable amount of radiation. While Moises realises that it isn’t possible to eliminate the need for the surgery - he’s a scientist, not a wizard - he understood that he could in fact reduce the need for the patient to undergo so many X-rays, reducing the patient’s exposure to unnecessary and harmful radiation. “Back in 2018, I was speaking to Dr. Javier Coloma, an orthopaedic surgeon at Hospital
Moises Barbera Ramos CEO & Co-Founder Drill Surgeries
Arnau de Villanova, Spain, who had recently performed one of these surgeries. Very simply, there is a nail with two holes on each end; you fix one end to the bone, and the other end to the bone, and that is it,” says Moises. “The problem is that these holes are very small, and to see where they are in the patient requires many X-rays to keep track of them - which makes the process much longer. We began to wonder if there could be a way to locate these holes faster, and without radiation. So we started looking at ways of using programming and code to assist surgeons with this type of medicine, therefore eliminating the need for radiation. That was the spark of the idea and he is now our Principal Advisor and leading the current trials in Spain.”
Identifying the need
Following this, Moises spent months developing his program to solve this issue. He spoke to many surgeons from around the world, first in the UK and in Spain, then as far afield as Australia and Switzerland, asking if they faced this issue, and if they believed that this solution could work. “All of them faced the same problem. It’s a really simple procedure, but they have to spend ages taking X-rays because they need to know where these tiny holes are, and there wasn’t any other way to do it,” says Moises. Other companies and innovators in the field have attempted to fix this issue before. Techniques such as ultrasound and electromagnetic approaches had been posited as the fix for this procedure, but they were not successful - meaning that surgeons had to continue to rely on X-rays. Yet, Moises wasn’t going to tackle the problem with these solutions - he was going to use AI.
“I realised that we could use computing to solve this issue. We started with some mathematical equations - this was the basic proof of principle,” he says. “We continued by building on top to create an augmented reality interface. Our so ware runs on a mixed reality headset that recognises the environment and the surgery taking place, builds 3D models and provides hands-free guidance during the surgery.
“So, say this procedure is being performed on the patient’s leg - the program recognises the procedure that is being performed, and the surgeon can see everything that’s going on in the patient’s leg without needing to use radiation.”
“Additionally, we also aim to reduce operating time, we’ve tested this in mannequins with promising results, potentially up to 75 per cent less time and up to 60 per cent less radiation. We have also filed a patent so our technology is patent-pending at the UK IP o ice.”
Despite his youth, Moises has impressive supporters among business and academia, including the University of Liverpool and Liverpool John Moores University, Santander X and the European Union European Regional Development Fund. He has already won several awards, including Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 from EducateNorth and Tata Varsity Pitch 2021 for Most Disrupting Business 2021.
This product has already received the support of many institutions, including international hospitals, but Moises is determined to get his product out there. “At the moment we are raising our first round of investment, so we can welcome shareholders into the company to help us shape the business. Through economical support, and through sharing expertise in the area, we can get this prototype ready for trials in a big way this year.” Patients are already experiencing a palpable benefit from this program - all stemming from a desire to fix the simple issue of finding very small holes. What this does prove, however, is that even if you are only fixing a small problem, you can vastly improve the quality of life for a patient.
Contact Information
contact@drillsurgeries.com www.drillsurgeries.com
