SamSMU is developing new progressive methods and approaches of advanced medicine, which are embodied in popular software and hardware-software systems. Today Russian medical science is in dire need of innovative and ground-breaking solutions and approaches. Despite the fact that historically our clinical basis and the level of medical personnel training are good, we’re looking to advance technological base to catch up on the gap of 90s.

We’ve been working on virtual and augmented reality since 2013. We started to form the core of developers, the culture of production and cultivate a new generation of specialists from day one. In 2015 we conducted the first-ever surgery using augmented reality glasses. We managed to beat Microsoft, a leader in AR technology at the time, which conducted the same operation only a few years later.

SamSMU had everything at its disposal to participate and win the LRC competition. The new status and the state grant will allow us to expand markets to sell our technologies and products, as well as diversify our geography.

In 2014, having reorganized the Department of Innovative Technologies, SamSMU created an autonomous structure called the Institute for Innovative Development. Its primary focus is on IT medicine. The Institute began to develop and implement cutting edge technologies for treating diseases (illnesses) and training doctors.

The first projects dealt with training medical personnel. We began to make robotic simulators for our students so they could study special manipulations. However, the main drawback of these simulators was that they were expensive and not intended for mass use. In addition, they did not provide feedback and create the necessary conditions for students to immerse into the educational process.

We started to think about ways of optimizing the simulators. We did some research, looked at foreign practices and realized that it was necessary to go digital. So we refocused our team to work with VR&AR technology, developing the first prototypes of training simulators for performing a cricothyrotomy (where an incision made to establish a patent airway) and a larger training simulator for conducting open surgery. We were able to achieve a high degree of realism. We are especially proud of the multi-user mode, where surgeons and surgical assistants from around the world can conduct joint operations on the open surgery simulator.

Soon afterwards products for patient rehabilitation were added to our educational programmes.

In 2015 we developed an augmented reality surgical navigation system. Eventually we created a product called Autoplan. This is the first surgical navigation system developed and registered in Russia, its unique design features a stereo camera. The complex is already used in the country’s leading clinics, such as the Burdenko National Medical Research Center for Neurosurgery and the Sklifosovsky Clinical and Research Institute of Emergency Medicine in Moscow.

By the end of 2019 more than 900 successful operations were carried out in Russia with the use of the Autoplan system. The complex received positive assessments based on the test results in Université Jean Monnet (France) and Heinrich Heine (Germany).

Currently, 70% of commercial customers of the SamSMU Institute for Innovative Development are medical companies. 30% are within the industry and the education sector. It is estimated that in 2020–2021 the number of non-medical orders in the institute’s portfolio will increase to 50% — 60%.