The technical team made up In June 2020 a meeting was held to review progress during 2019 in the NAVIPHY project, "Navigation, Physical Simulation and Imaging in Intraoperative Procedures". Brokered by the State Research Agency (Agencia Estatal de Investigación) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the project’s consortium is made up by Research Institute of the Hospital Universitario La Paz (IdiPAZ), the Virtual Reality and Modelling Group (Grupo de Modelado y Realidad Virtual: GMRV) of the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos and the Canary Island Healthcare Research Foundation (Fundación Canaria de Investigación Sanitaria: FUNCANIS), with GMV as leader.

NAVIPHY’s purpose is to achieve greater precision in brain, breast and maxillofacial surgery while also combining them with intraoperative radiotherapy and brachytherapy. With this overarching aim in mind, surgical simulation algorithms are now being developed, while the use of intraoperative imaging is also being explored in order to upgrade GMV’s inhouse surgical navigation demonstrator.

The first part of the stocktaking meeting looked into the progress made during 2019 in all the various aspects of the research: surgical simulation, intraoperative imaging, navigation and interoperability. The meeting also recognized the significant progress made in the analysis of clinical needs, including the first developments in those areas.

Throughout the meeting the healthcare experts from the various specialties involved in the project stressed the huge benefits of the technology under development, not only in terms of surgery and radiotherapy but also in the combination of both disciplines. They argued that the work now performed will bring about a substantial change in how these interventions are addressed in the future.

The technical team made up by the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos (URJC) and GMV were also congratulated on their work, with special recognition going to the biomedical engineers expressly hired to carry out the NAVIPHY project.

In the words of Carlos Illana, product manager of GMVs Secure e-Solutions sector, "the readiness and willingness of the healthcare personnel has exceeded all our expectations, allowing us to make much more headway in the year than we had dared to hope beforehand". URJC representatives likewise acknowledged the commitment of the healthcare personnel taking part in the project.