Real-time Digital Twin Assisted Surgery

手术是NHS提供的一种关键治疗方法。COVID19年之前的数据(2004-2014)显示，英格兰的外科手术增加了27%(进行了1000万次手术)。尽管2020年有150万例因新冠肺炎而取消或推迟的手术(英格兰和威尔士减少了约33.6%)，癌症手术的等待名单可能会导致更多的死亡，但肿瘤切除手术最近已经恢复，并保持在较高水平(例如，2021年约51%的确诊患者接受了肾脏肿瘤切除)。2009-2014年间，英国外科手术的总经济负担为546亿英镑(109亿英镑/年)，占NHS总预算的9.4%(2013-2014年为1170亿英镑)。显然，临床上需要最大限度地减少手术、医疗保健成本、患者等待名单和相关的患者并发症。为了满足这一需求，我们的目标是通过创造一种突破性的实时数字双胞胎辅助手术(DTAS)技术，对未来的手术，特别是癌症的手术进行数字化改造。患者是这项技术的核心，对他们的生活质量和医疗保健具有显著和可衡量的好处。DTAS可以应用于几种类型的手术(开放手术、微创手术或机器人手术)，以实现高精度的肿瘤切除，甚至在部分器官切除中也是如此。一个平行的目标是改革外科培训，提供以患者为中心的个性化外科排练的新范例。这个项目是及时的，将由一支具有国际竞争力、经验丰富的多学科团队交付，能够实现我们的愿景。我们的团队涵盖了几个学科，包括患者的生活体验；健康技术；生物工程；数字双胞胎(DT)技术；人工智能(AI)；数学科学；数值模拟。

Surgery is a critical treatment delivered by NHS. Pre-COVID19 data (2004-2014) suggest a 27% increase in surgeries in England (>10 million operations performed). Despite >1.5 million cancelled or postponed surgeries in 2020 due to COVID19 (~33.6% reduction in England and Wales) and rocketed waiting lists for cancer surgery likely resulting in more deaths, tumour resection surgeries have recently resumed and remain high (e.g. ~51% of diagnoses received a kidney tumour resection in 2021). The total UK economic burden of surgery was ~£54.6 billion between 2009-2014 (£10.9 bn pa), amounting to 9.4% of the total NHS budget (£117 billion, 2013-2014). There is a clear clinical need for minimising surgical operations, healthcare costs, patient waiting lists, and associated patient complications.To address this need, we aim to digitally transform future surgery, particularly for cancer, by creating a ground-breaking real-time digital twin assisted surgery (DTAS) technology. The patient is at the core of this technology, with significant and measurable benefits for their quality of life and healthcare. DTAS can be applied to several types of surgery (open, minimally invasive, or robotic surgery), for high precision tumour removal even in a partial organ resection. A parallel goal is to revolutionise surgical training, offering a new paradigm of patient-centred personalised surgical rehearsal. This project is timely and will be delivered by an internationally competitive, highly experienced multidisciplinary team, capable of delivering our vision. Our team covers several disciplines, including the lived experience from patients; health technologies; bioengineering; digital twin (DT) technology; artificial intelligence (AI); mathematical science; numerical simulation.