AstraZeneca Launches 'Respiratory Intervention Academy' to Foster Ecosystem Collaboration and Advance Minimally Invasive Respiratory Care

The popularity of interventional therapy is evident to all.

As a novel therapeutic approach, it utilizes medical imaging equipment to guide needles, catheters, guidewires, and other instruments percutaneously into the human body, delivering specific devices to the lesion site for minimally invasive treatment.

Minimally invasive surgical trauma, proven efficacy, and favorable postoperative recovery have made interventional therapy a focal point of public attention. In an increasing number of specialized disease segments across various departments, numerous companies are emerging and establishing their presence in fields such as gastrointestinal intervention, cardiac intervention, oncological intervention, and neurointervention. All these enterprises are seeking the next interventional therapy segment with explosive growth potential.

Respiratory Intervention May Become the Next Key Growth Sector. The Reasons Are as Follows—

First, interventional diagnostic and therapeutic techniques for the respiratory tract have long become an integral part of clinical practice in pulmonology., becoming an effective means for etiologic diagnosis and local treatment. The use of endoscopy in respiratory interventional diagnosis and treatment has a history of over one hundred years. This is a clinical specialty that has relatively readily embraced interventional techniques.

Second, there is a large patient population with substantial treatment needs.Taking patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) among respiratory diseases as an example, Frost & Sullivan predicts that the number of COPD patients in China will reach 107 million in 2022. Both patients and clinicians urgently hope to diagnose and treat respiratory diseases, including those in COPD patients, through precise, minimally invasive interventional procedures.

However, there are currently some pain points in the field of interventional pulmonology.For instance, although the clinical application of flexible bronchoscopy for diagnosing bronchial diseases is rapidly gaining popularity, issues such as the need for standardization and improvement of operational techniques persist. Furthermore, apart from routine flexible bronchoscopy, other modalities available for respiratory interventional diagnosis and treatment remain underutilized and less widely implemented.

How to address the aforementioned issues, ensure the effective and full utilization of high-quality medical devices and consumables, continuously improve the operational proficiency of clinicians, and maximize patient benefits is undoubtedly a question that industry practitioners must contemplate.

The establishment of the “Respiratory Intervention Academy” is precisely aimed at addressing the aforementioned issues.

“Respiratory Intervention Academy” will leverage AstraZeneca’s six innovation pavilions as training bases to further improve the basic operational skills of interventional endoscopy in primary care hospitals and enhance the comprehensive level of respiratory intervention diagnosis and treatment in secondary and tertiary hospitals.

In the proposed plan, the "Respiratory Intervention Academy" will conduct 2–3 days of training centered on a specific theme. By inviting multiple experts, the program will provide targeted instruction to participants, progressing from theoretical foundations and procedural demonstrations to simulation drills and proficiency mastery. This targeted training will fully account for participants’ regional characteristics, hospital tiers, and professional standards, delivering customized thematic designs and personalized training programs.

In reality, building an ecosystem for interventional pulmonology cannot be achieved by a single enterprise. To better develop this ecosystem, the “Interventional Pulmonology Academy” is recruiting partners from across China who are active in related fields. By pooling industry-wide resources, the initiative aims to foster development, create a new ecosystem for interventional pulmonology, and further enhance the national standard of diagnosis and treatment in this specialty.

On October 9, 2022, AstraZeneca will hold an exchange meeting on ecosystem co-construction for the “Respiratory Intervention Academy” at the AstraZeneca Business Innovation Center in Zhejiang, to discuss “integration of academic platform resources” and “establishment of training academies.”Attendees will include Zhu Lili, Vice President of AstraZeneca China and Head of the Digital & Commercial Innovation and Commercial Strategy & Excellence Departments; Professor Chen Enguo from Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine; and Cai Xiaoyu, Deputy Director of AstraZeneca’s Respiratory Disease Innovation Team, among others.

To register for the conference, please scan the QR code at the end of the article.Note: In accordance with epidemic prevention and control requirements, attendees of the in-person conference must present a valid nucleic acid test result within its validity period, as per local epidemic prevention and control policies. To ensure smooth participation, please undergo nucleic acid testing in advance.

Poster Review No. CN-103114

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