Ivan Gusachenko wins HORAO

The five finalists from the United States, Canada, Spain, France and Germany delivered a neck-and-neck race at the public HORAO conference in Bern yesterday evening. They had all taken part in the global crowdsourcing competition (the intelligence of the masses) to develop an even more powerful microscope for brain tumor surgery in 2018 and had been nominated by an internationally renowned jury to participate in the final. At the HORAO conference, the five finalists faced the last challenge: they presented their proposed solution to the jury and the audience, who then used e-voting to select the ultimate winner.

The aim of the HORAO project is to find innovative technologies that can visualize the boundaries between tumor and surrounding healthy tissue (brain fibers) during brain tumor surgery so that neurosurgeons can operate on brain tumors even more safely.

The project is backed by a team led by Prof. Dr. med. Philippe Schucht, Senior Physician at the Department of Neurosurgery at Inselspital, Bern University Hospital. In 2017, the team successfully carried out the first crowdfunding campaign in the field of medical research in Switzerland, before launching a global crowdsourcing competition in 2018. Crowdsourcing is still relatively unknown in Switzerland, unlike crowdfunding, but it combines the creative and intellectual potential of thousands and thousands of innovators from a wide range of fields worldwide.

A total of more than 10,000 people showed an interest in HORAO crowdsourcing. More than 270 researchers and 18 teams from over 30 countries on all continents of the world took part in the competition. 45 projects from over 20 countries were submitted.

“Orao” is a verb of Greek origin. It has many inherent meanings that symbolize the complexity of the project: on the one hand, HORAO means to see something with your eyes; on the other hand, it also means to see something with your mind. Neurosurgeons need both.