UpSurgeOn has developed the mental (App) and manual (physical products) training tools related to 6 cranial procedures for neurosurgery: Pterional, Temporal, Retrosigmoid, Interhemispheric, Suboccipital and Transsphenoidal approach. For the digital part of the development (mental training), these approaches are included in “Neurosurgery” App while the physical components of UpSurgeOn Academy are composed of 6 different physical devices, integrated in a unique modular solution, the BrainBox.
During Period 1, we’ve started to collaborate with leading institutions for demonstration and acceptability and we had the first real-live demonstrations at University of Berlin - Charitè Hospital (Berlin) and Royal London Hospital (London) where we had workshops with students, resident and young neurosurgeons who had the chance to experiment a series of tasks with our prototypes products.
At the same time, several dissemination and communication activities have also been implemented to raise awareness of UpSurgeOn Academy products
In the second period, the pandemic forced us to review our large-scale testing and dissemination strategy because of the interruption of live scientific events and travelling. Talking about the hands-on courses, we have successfully experimented a new way of disseminating training and testing experience by opting for a “distancing hands-on” training strategy. We started delivering the technology allowing to local faculties to perform cadavers-free neurosurgical courses in their institutions with our online support in the use of the technology and the online participation of international faculties. Actually, this kind of training strategies were part of our mission since the beginning and represented a major driver in the design of our technologies.
Talking about dissemination activities during the second period, we organized 35 hands-on training courses and 7 conferences. In all the courses and workshops, we collected survey-based feedbacks (around 250) and recorded interviews (around 25).
In terms of Business Model, despite our initial focus on B2C and Institutional B2B, we started working on creating specific collaborations with medical industries. The courses organized around the world and global training have naturally strengthened the interest of industrial B2B. With the pandemic and the drastic interruption of cadaver lab courses, Institutional B2B has strengthened the demand for technologies for remote training or in any case without the use of cadavers. For the same reasons medical industries started asking for alternatives to cadavers for their courses.
For those reasons, we reversed our business model strategy by targeting schools directly, and through schools to reach end users, i.e. trainees, all this through collaboration with industries, often major sponsors of courses within institutions.
Commercially, in 2021 we carried out more than 35 courses and recorded more than 300 customers in more than 70 countries around the world, 50% of which represented by Universities and Neurosurgery Schools.
