What if we could perform life-saving interventions autonomously?

The Problem

• Many Americans do not have access to specialized facilities with advanced surgical expertise, including for time-sensitive surgeries.
• Each year, hundreds of thousands of Americans suffer from strokes caused by a clot blocking large blood vessels in the brain. The only way to effectively treat such a stroke is a thrombectomy, a procedure where a highly specialized surgeon removes the clot to restore normal blood flow. Unfortunately, there are not enough trained surgeons to perform these procedures for everyone who needs them. Only 12% of the 335,000 eligible stroke patients get this life-saving treatment each year.
• More than half of Americans live over an hour away from a hospital that can perform a thrombectomy. The longer treatment is delayed, the higher the risk of serious long-term disability or death. Every 10-minute delay in treatment adds about $10,000 in healthcare costs.
• Even surgical procedures that are not as time-sensitive, such as biopsies or kidney stone removal, often require people to travel long distances, missing work and incurring high costs. These procedures can also be invasive and cause complications.

The Solution

• Autonomous Interventions and Robotics (AIR) is a game-changing robotic surgery program aiming to increase access to life-saving surgeries. If successful, AIR will revolutionize surgery by enabling robots to perform entire interventions without direct human input.  
• Stroke patients will be able to receive curative thrombectomy procedures at the nearest hospital, vastly improving health outcomes and life expectancy.
• Small AIR robots (microbots) will introduce a new paradigm for medical interventions transforming invasive procedures in advanced care settings into minimally invasive procedures performed in a general practitioner’s office, and, in the future, anywhere.
• All Americans will be able to receive simpler, less invasive and more affordable treatments anywhere in the U.S., not just in highly specialized medical centers.  

Only ARPA-H can...

• Transform surgical care and stroke treatment for patients by taking on high risk projects and mobilizing our nation’s most advanced technological and clinical expertise.
• Bring together scientists, engineers, surgeons, and industry to create safe, autonomous medical robotics.
• Strengthen the U.S. economy by driving breakthrough innovation that is so vital to small and large domestic companies in this growing field.