3D modeling has been one of the greatest breakthroughs of the 21st century. Its use has been widely accepted by the gaming, architecture, engineering, advertising, and even the movie industry. Nevertheless, people rarely thought of the benefits it could bring into the fields of healthcare and medics.

Santiago Birkner de Miguel, Lucas Julián Mey, and Matías Ezequiel Biancucci recognized the most valuable aspect of 3D technology. The opportunity for its utilization in improving the healthcare system and surgical planning arose.

To be more precise, Mirai 3D is a biomedical engineering platform. It focuses on optimizing surgical planning and doctor training programs by using technologies like 3D printing, and virtual reality, among others.

With Mirai 3D, the most common issues and problems typical for cancer, cardiovascular, or thoracic surgeries are now becoming history and an easy task for every experienced surgeon.

If you want to know more about this groundbreaking invention, continue reading about three young men’s dedication, talent, and perseverance.

Modeling the Future from Argentina

The Mirai 3D story has rather humble beginnings. The platform was founded in 2017 in Argentina, by Santiago Birkner de Miguel, Lucas Julián Mey, and Matías Ezequiel Biancucci. From their early college days, they have been thinking about how bio models can solve a wide array of complex cardiovascular, pediatric, and oncological problems.

Faced with the growing cardiovascular disorders and the increased occurrence of cancer diseases among the population, Santiago, Lucas, and Matías decided to take a stance and confront this issue with all their will and strength. They geared up with uncompromising determination and tackled these difficulties, solving them once and for all.

From an early age, Santiago, Lucas, and Matías have been interested in the connection between medicine and technology. That’s how they developed a common and zealous interest in biomedical engineering.

In 2013, they all enrolled at the Universidad Favalo, taking up the biomedical/medical engineering curriculum. The three young men quickly recognized each others’ passion and will to make a positive change in society. The initial ideas for employing 3D technologies in surgical planning were conceived at this very place.

Education Is Crucial

First, we will talk about Santiago. He has a long and admirable educational history. He has been searching for his interest in rather different fields of science. For example, in 2010, as a part of the Cambridge Education group, Santiago acquired various certificates in biology, geography, English language and literature, and maths. In 2012, Santiago even acquired a bachelor’s degree in Natural Sciences at the International Baccalaureate Educational Center in Geneva.

Lucas is not far behind with his scholarship, either. From 2018 to 2020, he was a part of Coursera, an e-learning institution that provides all kinds of technical education services. Lucas acquired certificates in convolutional neural networks, neural networks and deep learning, structuring machine learning projects, improving deep neural networks, and AI for medical diagnosis.

On the other hand, Matías is of a different mold. He was young and passionate when he started volunteering at TECHO, a non-profit and non-governmental institution operating in Argentina and the Caribbean. For almost five years, from 2013 to 2018, Matías has been a part of this organization whose main purpose is to end poverty by joining actions of residents and young people.

It’s crystal clear where these three guys were heading. With their unselfish and considerate temper, they turned toward the most vulnerable category of people, the ill and desperate ones. From now on, helping them will be their number one priority!

Universidad Falado: the Place Where Mirai 3D Was Born

In 2013, they all signed up for Biomedical/Medical Engineering Studies at the Universidad Falado. It’s the meeting point for the three enthusiastic lads and a place where they began to gather their ideas and experience around the problem of surgical planning.

Santiago, Lucas, and Matías were pondering on some rather troublesome questions. How to avoid mistakes and unforeseen errors, reduce surgery time, increase security or clarify the relationship between tumors and vascular structures, were some of the major issues weighing on the lads’ young minds.

This led them to a simultaneously simple and demanding solution, called 3D planning. They started creating 3D models of different kinds of organs, vessels, or even muscles for clearer, more precise insight.

Furthermore, Santiago, Lucas, and Matías employed their previous working experience in further development of the models. Matías invested his previous skills in the installation and repairing of digital radiology equipment. Lucas contributed with his experience in the development of non-invasive pulse wave velocity measurement equipment.

In 2017, after finishing their studies at the Universidad Falado, Santiago, Lucas, and Matías were ready and launched the Mirai 3D platform. Their conception was a packing a noble cause. The platform was a non-profit service provider that would enable doctors to train and gain experience in various surgery fields as well as offering patients much more secure and reliable treatment.

Mirai 3D’s Funding Transparency

Mirai 3D is a platform that gathered its initial funds based on the ‘seed’ principal. In the first funding round which was held on Jun 5, 2017, Mirai 3D managed to gather $20.000. The second funding round was raised on May 4, 2018. This time, the platform managed to gather $40.000. In both seed rounds, the leading and only investor was Start-Up Chile, a company that is a specialized startup accelerator created by the Chilean Government.

This financial support was crucial for the development of the 3D strategy and further diversification of the services which Mirai 3D provides its customers. Now, thanks to Start-up Chile, Mirai 3D can guarantee its sustainability by providing training programs, bio-models for complex surgical planning of endoscopic procedures, virtual planning services, and much more.

Mirai’s 3D: Our 3D Future

Currently, Mirai has 5 employees and its headquarters are in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Their main competitors are other enterprises engaged in 3D medical training methods such as Crisalix, or the US corporation, Simbionix.

Today, Matías holds the position of CEO and co-founder, while Lucas is the current CTO and co-founder. Santiago is present at Mirai 3D as the co-founder and Chief Medical Officer.

Presently, Mirai 3D is actively engaged in hybrid surgical simulation projects. The most notable ones are the UroTrainer and the Breast Surgical Simulator. With the UroTrainer, they offer advanced uro-oncological training programs for both novice and experienced surgeons. By making the UROTRAINER VK-1 available to health institutions and doctors, Mirai 3D is taking urology to a whole new different level.

The of the most notable users of this project are Clinica Santa Maria, Hospital Aleman Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires, and Universidad Finis Terrae. Mirai 3D is providing them with webinars, videos, events, and hands-on experience for better understanding and improvement of their doctors’ performance.

Another project, courtesy of Mirai 3D is the Breast Surgical Simulator. This biomedical engineering masterpiece is a perfect solution for gaining practical skills in all kinds of breast surgeries. Now, doctors can use this simulator for improving their efficiency in enlargement, reconstruction, or sometimes even breast reduction surgeries.

As we all know, the Covid-19 pandemic has been a huge burden on the health systems around the world. Mirai 3D took also this into consideration and determinedly started building Covid-19-relief solutions that will make doctors’ stay at the hospitals safer and much less stressful. Face Shields, aerosol boxes, and diagnosis test swabs are something more than 20 hospitals currently use.

As one of the most sophisticated 3D printing simulators, Mirai 3D is and will continue to be the light in the darkness for thousands of people faced with cardiovascular, cancer, or pediatric problems.

Hopefully, in the near future, we’ll see many other companies and platforms which will follow the example and give us the opportunity to live our lives to the fullest!