1. What inspired the SHERPA project, and what are its main goals in supporting interventional radiologists?

SHERPA recognized the growing shortage of interventional radiologists (IRs) and the increasing complexity of image-guided therapies (IGT). These procedures, such as neurovascular interventions and oncological ablations, are minimally invasive but require high expertise, long training, and constant adaptation to rapidly evolving technologies. This creates workforce pressure and burnout risks. 

The main goals of SHERPA are to provide AI-powered assistive technologies as a “trusted companion” to IRs. These solutions will automate repetitive tasks and support decision-making across the entire workflow, accelerate learning curves and improve precision and safety in complex interventions. Their value will be demonstrated and evaluated in two clinical domains: neurovascular treatment of brain aneurysms and thermal ablation of liver tumors.  

2. How do you see SHERPA’s technologies helping improve patient care and make clinical workflows easier in neurology and oncology?

SHERPA integrates AI and robotics into clinical workflows to enhance decision support, e.g. AI helps identify which aneurysms need treatment and optimizes patient selection for liver ablation. Benefits are expected in four areas: 

– AI-powered solutions support decision-making and patient stratification for image-guided therapy 

– Enhanced planning software and robotic assistance improve precision and reduce intervention difficulty 

– Automated settings and robotic devices replace manual actions, preserving physician focus and enhancing job satisfaction

– AI software confirms treatment success, preventing re-treatment and supporting personalised follow-up 

3. What is the biggest challenge do you foresee in bringing these assistive tools into everyday clinical practice?

The main challenge may come with the introduction of assistive tools. Despite the benefits of the project innovations, healthcare professionals may resist the adoption of such new AI-enabled workflows due to a lack of understanding or fear of disruption 

To address this challenge, SHERPA will introduce a methodological framework to assess the benefits related to patient experience, workflow, workload, job satisfaction and work performance. These insights will help demonstrate the value of assistive technologies for the wider healthcare professional community and the healthcare system. 

4. What are the major achievements of the first year?

After the inspiring kickoff meeting in January 2025 the project partners made good progress with the realization of a data collection and annotation platform and the development of AI-based algorithms for medical image interpretation. In parallel the study protocols for the clinical studies are under preparation. Very noticeable achievements have been the presence and dedicated SHERPA sessions at internationally recognized conferences ECR, ECIO, ESMINT and CIRSE.  

5. What are the next steps for SHERPA, and what do you hope the project will achieve in the coming years?

The next steps in the project include further development and refinement of algorithms for decision support, and the clinical validation of AI based applications and robotic tools in real-world settings. Subsequently, we aim to demonstrate and assess the value of automated interventional workflows for the staff, patients, and the healthcare system. 

The long-term vision of the project is to ease the workload of interventional radiologists (IRs) by providing advanced assistive technologies. We aim to reduce procedure complexity and time, making advanced interventions accessible to more hospitals, and to improve patient safety and outcomes through precision and automation.