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The augmented operating room

Designing, testing and deploying the digital innovations that make surgery safer — at the heart of the Hepato-Biliary Centre.

▶ The BOPA Chair in video

The “Augmented Operating Room” (BOPA) innovation chair designs, tests and deploys digital innovations in the operating room to improve the quality and safety of care, particularly in hepato-biliary and pancreatic surgery.

Launched in January 2020 and supported by three founding members — AP-HP, Institut Mines-Télécom (IMT) and Université Paris-Saclay — the chair is a “phygital” (physical and digital) initiative that measures surgical practices and helps improve them. It was initiated and is led by Pr Éric Vibert, a surgeon at the Centre.

Since 2020AP-HPInstitut Mines-TélécomUniversité Paris-Saclay
BOPA Chair logo — Augmented Operating Room: AP-HP, Institut Mines-Télécom, Université Paris-Saclay

The method

Six systemic blocks

The chair structures its research around six complementary areas, from the human factor to data.

Human Factor block

The human factor in the operating room: communication between the surgeon, the team and the patient.

Viz block

Capturing and analysing the surgical image: stabilised high-definition images, analysis of the surgeon's vision, targeting of anatomical details.

Bot block

Natural-language analysis in the operating room and conversational robotics, with the intra-operative voice assistant “Henri”.

Light block

Augmented reality through light: fluorescence imaging and intra-operative guidance.

Touch block

Augmented touch and digital twins of organs, with cobotics.

Box block

Protecting and harnessing operating-room and patient data — by analogy with the aviation “black box”.

Concrete innovations

Serving AP-HP

The chair identifies operating-room problems and brings human and technological solutions.

“Henri”, the voice assistant

An intra-operative voice assistant the team talks to for information about the patient or a step of the operation. Developed with Lettria. Bot block

Digital twins of organs

Digital replicas that reproduce tissue deformation according to the surgeon's movements, to simulate an operation and anticipate its consequences. Touch block

Augmented vision

Recording stabilised high-definition images, analysing the surgeon's vision during the operation and targeting anatomical details. Viz block

A unique place

A dedicated space at Paul-Brousse

The chair has its own space at Paul-Brousse Hospital, with privileged access to the Hepato-Biliary Centre's operating rooms — to develop innovations and then test them as close as possible to real conditions.

  • 158 m² of test space provided by the hospital
  • A mock operating room reproducing the CHB's infrastructure
  • Shared offices: AP-HP caregivers, IMT & INRIA engineers, Paris-Saclay & CNAM researchers
  • A videoconference and meeting room

BopTech

A technological and scientific platform located at the heart of the Centre's operating theatre, dedicated to image-guided surgery, endoscopy and hepato-biliary and pancreatic oncology.

Funded by AP-HP, the Paris Saclay Cancer Cluster (PSCC) and BPI France.

The chair's team

The people behind BOPA

A dedicated team runs the chair and the BopTech platform, alongside caregivers and researchers.

EF

Elie Farah

Director of the BopTech platform

AP

Axelle Piguet

Engineer