President Paul Kagame, on Wednesday, March 29, met with Prof. Jacques Marescaux, Founder and President of the Research Institute against Digestive Cancer (IRCAD) to discuss areas of partnership.

According to the Office of the President, they discussed training Rwandan doctors in the latest technology-enabled minimally-invasive surgical techniques.

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Minimally invasive surgery, also called laparoscopic surgery, is becoming more and more common in hospitals. These procedures are performed through tiny incisions instead of one large opening.

Experts say that because these incisions are small, patients tend to have quicker recovery times and less discomfort than with conventional surgery.

A patient is discharged after two days only. Yet with the conventional way of surgery, one could spend more than ten days or even a month before being discharged.

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In 2018, the government of Rwanda through the Ministry of Health in partnership with IRCAD France, a global institution dedicated to advancing and teaching minimally invasive surgery, embarked on a new journey to establish an IRCAD center in Kigali.

The partnership aims to improve and advance surgery in Africa by closing the technology and knowledge gap in the field of research and training.

Since 2019, IRCAD Africa has been operational from its temporary offices in Kigali City Center. Currently, IRCAD Africa’s activities are mainly focused on research and development (R&D) in automated 3D modeling from medical images, modeling in surgical planning and software, as well as augmented reality.

Previously, Dr. Alexandre Hostettler, Head of the IRCAD Surgical Data Science Team (R&D), said that IRCAD Africa opens doors to every artificial intelligence engineer interested in developing health applications of artificial intelligence.