PM - Opening of the extension to the Lübeck Innovation Hub for Robotic Surgery (LIROS) at Fraunhofer IMTE

The Fraunhofer Research Institution for Individualized Medical Engineering IMTE today officially inaugurated the extension building of the Lübeck Innovation Hub for Robotic Surgery (LIROS) together with Dr. Dorit Stenke, Minister for General and Vocational Education, Science, Research and Culture. With LIROS, one of the most advanced research and transfer infrastructures for robot-assisted, automated, and AI-supported surgical procedures in Germany is being established. The new facility at the Fraunhofer IMTE headquarters in Lübeck sets a visible landmark for the medicine of the future.

The extension expands Fraunhofer IMTE with an operating room real-world laboratory that brings together state-of-the-art surgical technologies, robotic systems, and digital assistance solutions in a realistic environment. For the first time, research teams, clinical users, and industry partners will have the opportunity to develop, test, and systematically validate new surgical systems under controlled conditions.

In her speech, Minister Dr. Dorit Stenke emphasized the importance of this new infrastructure for the state of Schleswig-Holstein. “With LIROS, Lübeck is gaining a transfer center for medical technology that will significantly shape the future of surgical care. Robotics, automation, and artificial intelligence only realize their full potential when they are tested in realistic scenarios. This facility enables exactly that and therefore provides new momentum for both scientific excellence and the economic strength of our state,” she stated.

A key focus of LIROS is the development of new methods that allow surgical procedures to be researched, trained, and further developed under realistic conditions. To achieve this, patient-specific anatomical models, intelligent assistance systems, and advanced imaging technologies are combined in a clinically relevant environment. This creates training and evaluation scenarios in which complex procedures can be reproduced and further refined. Researchers analyze intraoperative data, develop digital and robot-assisted workflows, and work on the reliable networking of surgical devices in order to measurably improve safety, precision, and efficiency in the operating room.

The work carried out at LIROS therefore addresses central challenges in the medicine of the future. These include the automation of individual process steps, the development of adaptive navigation and decision-support systems, and the technical as well as semantic interoperability of medical technology devices.

The new infrastructure is open to scientific institutions as well as companies, start-ups, and clinical partners. It thus forms a supraregional hub for the development, validation, and translation of modern surgical technologies. With the expansion of LIROS, Lübeck sends a clear signal: the surgery of the future will be connected, precise, and personalized — and it will be driven forward at the Fraunhofer IMTE’s Transfer Center for Medical Technology.