The grant forms part of the Autonomous Interventions and Robotics (AIR) programme run by ARPA-H, a division of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health within the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Philips is leading the project, together with its academic partners Johns Hopkins University and Boston University, with additional clinical input from Dr J Mocco, Head of Neurosurgery at Weill Cornell Medicine. The work is being led on the Philips side by Dr Ileana Hancu.
The project addresses a persistent gap in stroke care. In the United States alone, approximately 335,000 people are eligible for thrombectomy each year – a minimally invasive procedure that can reverse the effects of a stroke if performed quickly enough. Yet only around 12 per cent of eligible patients receive this treatment, and more than half of Americans live more than an hour’s journey from a hospital capable of performing the procedure. Globally, fewer than 3 per cent of patients eligible for mechanical thrombectomy receive the procedure, despite the fact that stroke remains the second leading cause of death worldwide.
Combining technology for patient care
Philips aims to address this gap by building on its Azurion image-guided therapy platform, which combines imaging, robotics, AI-driven automation and smart interventional tools to enable remotely assisted and increasingly automated endovascular procedures. The funded work includes technology for endovascular navigation, robotic control, image-guided procedural guidance, workflow automation and remote intervention — all designed to operate under expert clinical supervision rather than to replace it.
"This ARPA-H programme is accelerating our long-term vision for image-guided intervention," said Bert van Meurs, Chief Business Leader for Image-Guided Therapy at Philips, who added that the aim is to make specialist-level care less dependent on geography or staff shortages. Betsabeh Madani-Hermann, Head of Research at Philips, said that the project builds on years of previous work in the field of image-guided and robotic procedural automation.
As part of the collaboration, Johns Hopkins is focusing on the autonomous navigation of medical devices, led by Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering Axel Krieger, whilst Boston University is developing steerable catheters under the leadership of Associate Professors Tommaso Ranzani and Sheila Russo. Dr Mocco, who is also acting as a clinical collaborator on the project, said that robotics can both improve the precision of endovascular stroke procedures and extend specialists’ expertise to patients via remote care.
Building on our expertise in image-guided therapy
Philips presents this award as an extension of its existing position in image-guided therapy, where, according to the company, more than 20,000 systems have been installed in over 80 countries, and where, somewhere in the world, a patient is treated with a Philipsimage-guided therapy system. The company, which also has more than forty years’ experience of public-private research partnerships, presents the ARPA-H funding as a step towards a suite of interventions that will ultimately bring together robotics, AI automation and connected devices within a single clinical workflow.
Philips emphasised that the technologies are still under development and that their future clinical or commercial use is subject to approval by the regulatory authorities.
Dutch high-tech at the heart of international breakthroughs in medtech
Philips, one of the leading players within the Dutch high-tech ecosystem, is developing this technology partly from the Netherlands, building on decades of expertise in image-guided therapy. This is also in line with the course the Netherlands itself has recently set: in July, the government allocated €102.5 million to structurally strengthen the Dutch MedTech sector, with Philips immediately committing to an investment of €50 million. International recognition such as this ARPA-H grant confirms that the decision to invest heavily in AI, robotics and precision technology in healthcare is the right one, and that Dutch expertise and industry can continue to play a leading role in this field.
