52 - "Superior Spine Care with a Patient-Specific Biomechanical Digital Twin of the Spine"
Host:
Roger Assaker
Co-founder & CEO of MDsim
Short bio:
Roger Assaker is an accomplished aerospace engineer with a PhD in Computational Mechanics. After starting his career as an R&D engineer at Goodyear's tech center in Luxembourg, he pursued an MBA while working. In 2003, he founded e-Xstream engineering, a leader in advanced material modeling, which he grew to the top of the industry before selling it to MSC Software in 2012. Assaker became CEO of MSC in 2020 and later founded MDsim, a medtech company focused on AI-driven spinal care. He is also an active business angel, investing in multiple startups and is on the board of medtech and non medtech startups.
In his private time Roger is passionate for outdoor sports!
Richard Assaker: Neurosurgeon with more than 30 years of experience, currently leading the Spine Department and Neurosurgical Operating Platform at CHU Lille. With over 15,000 surgeries performed and more than 30 patents, I am committed to advancing surgical techniques and research.
I am also the Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer of MDsim, a Software as a Medical Device (SaMD) platform designed to improve spine care and surgical planning. MDsim uses a biomechanical digital twin of the spine to help surgeons optimize patient outcomes.
I am also Professor of Neurosurgery at the University of Lille, dedicated to educating the next generation of surgeons. I have developed specialized courses and trained over 60 visiting surgeons internationally.
Abstract:
Aging, Scoliosis, Osteoporosis, … causes the spine to degenerate and to deform. The clinical solution is spine fusion. A complex and costly surgical procedure that require revision 30 to 40% of the time.
The presentation will introduce SPINEsim, a SaMD developed by MDsim to generate a patient-specific biomechanical digital twin of the spine that can be used by spine surgeons to plan the optimal spine surgery that respects geometric alignment and predict the mechanical balance of the construct.
