PILOT AURORA is in private pilot · public alpha opens Q4 2026 Apply to join

Open neurosurgery,
end-to-end. For every brain.

AURORA is an open infrastructure for neurosurgical disease — from molecular origin to lifelong outcomes. Eight disease modules in active development, expanding toward the whole field. MIT-licensed. Federation-friendly. Built by the people closest to the problem.

Disease Modules
9in private pilot
Subsystems
44under build
Stage
Private pilotPublic alpha Q4 ’26
License
MITat public alpha
OPEN INFRASTRUCTURE FOR NEUROSURGICAL DISEASE GLIOMA · SPINA BIFIDA · TETHERED CORD · HYDROCEPHALUS DANDY-WALKER · ENCEPHALOCELE · ARACHNOID CYST · CRANIOSYNOSTOSIS MIT LICENSED AT PUBLIC ALPHA · FEDERATION FRIENDLY · DICOM NATIVE PRIVATE PILOT · PUBLIC ALPHA OPENS Q4 2026 EIGHT MODULES TODAY · THE WHOLE FIELD TOMORROW OPEN INFRASTRUCTURE FOR NEUROSURGICAL DISEASE GLIOMA · SPINA BIFIDA · TETHERED CORD · HYDROCEPHALUS DANDY-WALKER · ENCEPHALOCELE · ARACHNOID CYST · CRANIOSYNOSTOSIS MIT LICENSED AT PUBLIC ALPHA · FEDERATION FRIENDLY · DICOM NATIVE PRIVATE PILOT · PUBLIC ALPHA OPENS Q4 2026 EIGHT MODULES TODAY · THE WHOLE FIELD TOMORROW
Karolinska / AURORA-GLIO scoping Boston Children's / AURORA-CRANIO co-design Necker / AURORA-SPINA MoU drafted Charité / AURORA-HYDRO alpha install GOSH / AURORA-CRANIO photo pipeline SickKids / AURORA-GLIO scoping Bambino Gesù / AURORA-SPINA registry tap NUS Health / AURORA-DWM prenatal scoping Kyoto University / AURORA-HYDRO compartment cal AIIMS / AURORA-ENCEPH forge test Hosp. Italiano / AURORA-CRANIO endpoint review UCSF / AURORA-GLIO RT planner Karolinska / AURORA-GLIO scoping Boston Children's / AURORA-CRANIO co-design Necker / AURORA-SPINA MoU drafted Charité / AURORA-HYDRO alpha install GOSH / AURORA-CRANIO photo pipeline SickKids / AURORA-GLIO scoping Bambino Gesù / AURORA-SPINA registry tap NUS Health / AURORA-DWM prenatal scoping Kyoto University / AURORA-HYDRO compartment cal AIIMS / AURORA-ENCEPH forge test Hosp. Italiano / AURORA-CRANIO endpoint review UCSF / AURORA-GLIO RT planner
EHR EHR EHR EHR EHR

Integratable with the systems care already runs on.

One governed gateway speaks the health-data standards, so none of the 212 platforms integrates on its own. 21 connectors, one certifiable surface.

See every integration
Network Network Network
Supported by
Amazon Web Services Microsoft for Startups

Cloud and compute credits. Supporters fund infrastructure only — they hold no role in study design, results, or governance.

What AURORA is

An open infrastructure for neurosurgical disease.

Eight disease modules under active build, sharing one six-layer substrate: data, models, clinical, research, ethics, community. MIT at public alpha. Federation-first. Built by the people closest to the problem.

Stage Private pilot
Public alpha Q4 · 2026
License MIT @ public alpha
Disease modules 9
Subsystems 44
Council seats 11 (incl. 2 patient advocates)
II · The Stack

Nine diseases. One platform.
Built to scale to the entire field.

Every module is a full vertical — registries, models, clinical workflows, ethics review, and a path from bench to bedside. Browse the modules; click any card to open its landing page.

live
01 / 09

Glioma

AURORA-GLIO · 11 subsystems

End-to-end stack for the most lethal primary brain tumor.

GLIO-SYS GLIO-MMB GLIO-TME GLIO-AI +7
planned
02 / 09

Spina Bifida

AURORA-SPINA · 6 subsystems

From prenatal closure to lifelong functional protection.

SPINA-ORIGIN SB-PRENATAL SB-REPAIR SB-PROTECT +2
planned
03 / 09

Tethered Cord

AURORA-TC · 4 subsystems

Mechanotransduction and release for a misunderstood syndrome.

TCS-SIGNAL TCS-PHENOTYPE TCS-RELEASE TCS-PROTECT
live
04 / 09

Hydrocephalus

AURORA-HYDRO · 3 subsystems

CSF dynamics, shunt logic and lifetime compartment care.

HYDRO-COMPFORM HYDRO-COMPDECIDE HYDRO-COMPLIFE
planned
05 / 09

Dandy-Walker

AURORA-DWM · 2 subsystems

Posterior fossa malformation, decoded across the lifespan.

DWM-ORIGIN DWM-LIFEFLOW
beta
06 / 09

Encephalocele

AURORA-ENCEPH · 2 subsystems

Prismatic anatomy and a forge for personalised closure.

ENCEPH-PRISM ENCEPH-FORGE
planned
07 / 09

Arachnoid Cysts

AURORA-ARACH · 3 subsystems

From membrane origin to fluid-mechanics-aware fenestration.

ARACH-ORIGIN ARACH-PHYSICS ARACH-FORGE
live
08 / 09

Craniosynostosis

AURORA-CRANIO · 8 subsystems

Skull mechanics, biomarkers and neurodevelopmental endpoints.

CRANIO-ORIGIN CRANIO-PHYSICS CRANIO-BIOMARKERS CRANIO-DIAGNOSTICS +4
beta
09 / 09

Chiari Malformation

AURORA-CHIARI · 5 subsystems

From tonsillar position to whole-craniospinal hydrodynamics.

CHIARI-ANATOMY CHIARI-CSF CHIARI-SYRINX CHIARI-DECIDE +1
Why we build Six refusals

Somewhere a family is being told to wait and see.

They are not waiting on a discovery. The thing that would help them already exists — in another hospital's registry, another team's model, another country's trial. They are waiting for the field to talk to itself.

01
Scale

A disease rare enough that no single hospital sees enough of it to learn from.

The hospitals stop working alone.

Federated cohorts let nine centres answer a question none of them could answer separately — without a single record leaving any of them.

Where we keep it federation cohorts nine modules
02
Fragmentation

The evidence exists, spread across a dozen registries that cannot speak to each other.

One study definition, run everywhere.

Written once in a shared vocabulary, executed at every site, results returned as aggregates. The definition travels; the patients' records never do.

03
Replication

A model works beautifully at the hospital that built it, and nowhere else.

It does not ship until it works somewhere else.

Every headline result is re-run at a site that had no hand in producing it, and the outcome is published either way — including the one that failed.

04
Equity

Outcomes still track postcodes, and the paper mentions it in the limitations.

Equity fails the release, not the discussion section.

Subgroup performance is a gate in the release path. A model that fails it does not ship, however good the aggregate number looks.

05
Power

Patients were consulted, thanked, and shown the door before the decisions.

Two seats on the council. Real votes. Permanent.

Observer status was proposed and rejected during review. Advocates vote on the same motions as clinical and technical members.

06
Access

The answer a family needed was already written — behind a paywall, in a language they don't read.

Open at the source, and in plain words.

MIT licence at public alpha, no embargo. And 204 guides plus 1,060 defined terms written for the person holding the scan, not the person who ordered it.

Planned · film series

Four films, when we can make them honestly.

Nothing is recorded yet. Each film needs ethics cover, a site willing to be named or a fully synthetic dataset, and clinician review of every frame that shows an output — so these are commitments, not teasers.

Film 01 Scripted ~6 min
What leaves the building

The federation boundary shown end to end: a query going out, aggregates coming back, and the records that never move.

Blocked on · site agreement
Film 02 Outlined ~9 min
Reading your own report

A clinician walking a family through a real report structure, naming every term as it appears — using a synthetic report, not a patient's.

Blocked on · clinician review
Film 03 Outlined ~5 min
The override, and why it stays

Why every output ships with its basis visible and a permanent way to disregard it — and what that costs in interface terms.

Blocked on · module maturity
Film 04 Consent pending ~11 min
Two seats at the table

The patient advocates on the council, in their own words, on what changed because they had a vote rather than a comment box.

Blocked on · participant consent

None of this is generous. It is the floor.

Every line above is a constraint we will not trade away for speed, funding, or a partnership. If we ever do, this page is the receipt you hold us to.

The manifesto, in five lines
01 Closed clinical AI compounded the problem.
02 Open infrastructure is the only response that scales.
03 Hospital data stays at the hospital. Always.
04 Patients have two permanent seats on the council.
05 Eight diseases today. The entire field within ten years.
Read the whole argument → vision.html
Our work, our writing

Every module ships its own writing.

AURORA is not built on top of an external citations library. Each module surfaces the working papers, preprints and RFCs its own team wrote — the methods and evaluation protocols, by the people doing the work.

Browse working papers →
Regulation & compliance

Built for the rules it will have to meet.

AURORA is research software in private pilot — not a certified medical device in any market, and we won't call it one until a regulator does. The obligations that can't be retrofitted are being built now: risk management, data governance, logging, human oversight, equity gates.

Read the full position
Device status Explicit Not a medical device — today Research use only. The moment a module produces patient-specific output meant to inform a decision, it becomes SaMD and does not ship until it has been through conformity assessment. Where the line sits EU AI Act In progress High-risk obligations, built in now Risk management, data governance, automatic logging, human oversight and declared accuracy — the five things you cannot retrofit once a model exists. Article by article Data protection In place Federated, so there is no lake Hospitals stay the controller of their own data. Computation moves to the data; only aggregates and model updates leave. There is no central dataset to breach or subpoena. GDPR & HIPAA detail Quality system In progress ISO 13485 · 14971 · IEC 62304 The machinery behind any future submission — design controls, hazard analysis, software lifecycle, traceability from requirement to test — under construction during pilot, not after. Standards status Evidence Enforced Equity is a release gate Retrospective, then silent prospective, then supervised clinical evaluation. Subgroup performance publishes even when unflattering, and a model that fails it does not ship. The staged path Accessibility In progress WCAG 2.2 AA, for a reason Patients reading this may be post-operative, medicated, or in distress. Adjustable type, read-aloud, reduced motion and print-clean handouts are clinical requirements here. Commitments

Where our status is “planned” we say planned. The compliance page carries an explicit list of what we are not claiming — no CE mark, no UKCA, no FDA clearance, no ISO or SOC 2 certification — so nothing has to be inferred from a wall of logos.

Eight diseases is the beginning.

Cookies · federation-first by default

We keep essential cookies so the site works. Everything else — analytics on which guides help, and remembering where you left off in a guide — is off until you say yes. We never sell data, and nothing you read here is tied to a clinical record.