Chimaera and Surgical AI Hub Germany at EAES 2026
The 34th Annual Congress of the European Association for Endoscopic Surgery EAES brought together surgeons, researchers, and industry partners in Athens for four days of clinical excellence, scientific exchange, and a shared vision for the operating theatre of tomorrow. For us at Chimaera, this year's congress was a defining milestone for the Surgical AI Hub Germany (SAIHG) project ‒ and a moment to see years of interdisciplinary work come to life in front of the surgical community.
A platform on the Presidential stage
One of the clear highlights of the congress was seeing the Surgical Quality Platform project, with Chimaera ImViA as a core component, featured in EAES President Prof. Dr. Nicole Bouvy's Presidential Lecture. In her presentation she outlined a vision in which artificial intelligence would democratize surgical expertise, making high-quality surgical care more consistent, comparable, and accessible worldwide.
Delivered in Athens, the birthplace of democracy, the message carried extra weight: our own contribution to this vision, the browser-based annotation and analysis capabilities of Chimaera ImViA, was part of the very platform that vision was built on.
Bringing the demonstrator to the congress floor
Beyond the Presidential Lecture, EAES 2026 was the moment SAIHG had been working toward since the project's sixth hackathon in Berlin earlier a few weeks ago: presenting a fully connected demonstrator, live, to the surgical community. At the Surgical AI Hub Germany booth in the Technology Corner, congress visitors could follow the complete workflow ‒ from the upload and automated anonymization of surgical videos, through AI-assisted analysis in Chimaera ImViA (such as surgical phase or bleeding detection), to the synchronized visualization of results within the Surgical Quality App.
The response from the surgical community
The demonstrator attracted continuous interest throughout the congress, with a steady flow of visitors exploring the platform at the Surgical AI Hub Germany booth. During the AI Masterclass, participants had the opportunity to experience the complete workflow first-hand. These hands-on sessions led to valuable discussions about practical requirements, clinical workflows, and future applications of AI-supported surgical quality assessment.
Particularly encouraging was the strong interest in the consortium's Early Adopter Engagement Study. Surgeons, researchers, and industry representatives shared their perspectives on how such technologies could be integrated into everyday clinical practice, providing important feedback for the next stage of development.
For our team, one of the most valuable aspects of EAES 2026 was the opportunity to discuss the demonstrator directly with its future users. Seeing clinicians interact with the software, test individual workflow steps, and openly share their expectations reaffirmed that successful surgical AI is developed through close collaboration between surgeons, engineers, researchers, and industry professionals.
Why this milestone matters for the project
The Surgical AI Hub Germany, which is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology, and Space (BMFTR), was established to make surgical quality measurable and comparable on a large scale. It replaces anecdotal assessment with an objective, data-driven analysis of surgical videos. Chimaera's contribution has focused on the annotation and processing side of this process, providing efficient, quality-assured tools that transform raw surgical footage into AI-ready training data.
Seeing this work integrated into a live, congress-ready demonstrator and referenced from the presidential stage is a strong signal that the platform is transitioning from an internal development milestone to a project that the surgical community recognizes and wants to be part of. Conversations from the Early Adopter Engagement Study in Athens will carry that momentum directly into the project's next phase.
Thank you
None of this would have been possible without the people behind it. We would like to thank the entire Surgical AI Hub Germany team and its partners, including Univ.-Prof. Dr. med. Martin Wagner, Dr. Johanna Brandenburg and Marlene Karl, as well as Formigas, MBITS Imaging, and KARL STORZ. We gratefully acknowledge the funding support of the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology, and Space (BMFTR) and thank the EAES for hosting such an outstanding forum for exchange.
Finally, we thank everyone who stopped by the booth, tested the platform, joined the masterclass, or asked a good question. We especially thank those who expressed interest in helping shape the next generation of Surgical AI ‒ we look forward to continuing the conversations that started in Athens.
This might also interest you:
Chimaera ImViA Ecosystem: Web Application Ecosystem for Smart Image and Video Annotation, Analysis & AI
Surgical AI Hub Germany: Objective Measurement of Surgical Quality with Data-Centric Value Creation Network
Annotation Services: Professional data annotation services with our own experts and in-house software – when quality matters!