Akivi: the medical revolution is underway
Florian Bernard, lecturer at the Faculty of Health and Cyril Royer, audio-visual technician at the University of Angers, co-founded the start-up Akivi in December 2022. This smartphone application is revolutionising the way medical and paramedical staff learn anatomy with its innovative and personalised teaching content.
Florian Bernard and Cyril Royer, co-founders of the Akivi start-up.
With a grant of 5,000 euros in December 2021 and a second grant of 10,000 euros in December 2022 from the Banque Populaire Grand Ouest foundation, Florian Bernard has made good on his promise. To run the Akivi (Anatomical Knowledge in Virtual Immersion) project as a start-up where the goal can be boiled down to one sentence: exploring the human body and its organs with the advice of professors through stereoscopy (the 3D visualisation technology used in the movie Avatar).
"Our goal is to offer a teaching tool that is tailored to the needs of students. Bringing together the tradition of anatomical knowledge and 3D in a mobile application was a crazy challenge," confides Florian Bernard, who is also a neurosurgeon at the University Hospital. "There was a lot of work to be done, particularly on the legal and intellectual property side. Akivi is now the first French application to focus on anatomy, and has strong values: accessible knowledge, respect for traditional anatomy and inclusion of all caregivers."
A project "made in" UA
The content is intended for medical staff and health students with the aim of promoting the development of new certified knowledge. The integrated content (MCQs, summary sheets, clinical cases, medical imagery, 3D dissections thanks to a partnership with Stanford University) is diverse and developed by doctors and anatomists.
"This new tool can be accessed on all devices (computer, smartphone, tablet) without a virtual reality headset. It reinforces the cognitive processes involved in learning and offers a personalised course," says Florian Bernard. "It is a medical revolution, especially since the digitalisation of education is also part of the government's economic recovery plan."
The software is the result of an educational innovation project, 'Anatomie 3D', which won a call for projects from Lab'UA and for which the University of Angers provided an audiovisual technician - Cyril Royer - who is now the executive director of Akivi. The research work was carried out in the anatomy laboratory of the Faculty of Health and the first scientific studies were published in 2017.
Satt Ouest Valorisation invested in the newly developed technology and supported the young start-up with a brand strategy, a business plan and a market study.
Nevertheless, there are still many challenges for Akivi: presenting the tool to other French universities, recruiting to expand the team, making the content accessible in English for greater international visibility, and English-language learning for French students because "doctors talk to their patients in French but read publications in English," concludes Florian Bernard. "The Akivi product is not finished, it is only the first version."
