In March 2026, the world's first invasive brain-computer interface (BCI) product was approved with a Class III medical device registration certificate.
This is a breakthrough worthy of being recorded in the industry's history, with the contribution of Sirrem Medical, a leading enterprise in the BCI rehabilitation industry chain. Looking across the industry, top domestic BCI companies have almost unanimously incorporated Sirrem Medical's technology into their own product systems.
Ten years ago, Sirrem Medical originated from the transformation of industry-university-research achievements at Shanghai Jiao Tong University; today, it has obtained 8 medical device registration certificates, over 80 patents and intellectual property rights, participated in the drafting of 5 national and group standards, and been certified as a High-tech Enterprise and a Specialized, Refined, Differential, and Innovation (SRDI) enterprise. It is also the first domestic company to apply flexible soft robot technology to the BCI rehabilitation field and achieve large-scale mass production.
Recently, Zhangtongshe had an exclusive interview with Meng Mingqiang, founder of Sirrem Medical, to explore how this company, which does not chase fleeting trends, has step by step become the "indispensable name" in the BCI rehabilitation industry chain.
Entrepreneurship Amid the Startup Boom: The SJTU Team's Venture
In 2016, relying on the solid scientific research and technological accumulation of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, the R&D team led by Meng Mingqiang quickly developed a large-scale exoskeleton rehabilitation robot.
However, during continuous market research, the team found that exoskeleton robots are bulky and expensive, almost only meeting the needs of Grade 3A hospitals. Taking stroke as an example, the golden rehabilitation period is half a year to one year, but patients are often hospitalized for only one or two weeks. Many people terminate rehabilitation after leaving the hospital, ultimately resulting in lifelong disabilities.
Meng Mingqiang's team began to ponder: how can discharged patients enjoy continuous rehabilitation and cover the golden rehabilitation period?
He decided to start from the real market demand for rehabilitation and find a solution. Just at this time, the technical route of flexible soft robots came into his view. In the laboratories of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, this technology was under research. Flexible soft robots are lightweight, soft, comfortable, safe, and cost-controllable, making them an ideal choice for rehabilitation.
In 2019, Meng Mingqiang established a new company in Linghao Bay to develop flexible soft rehabilitation robot products, and thus Sirrem Medical was born.
At that time, the research in the laboratory was still in its infancy, university papers had just been published, and no company in the world had mass-produced flexible robot products.
Meng Mingqiang led the initial R&D team of fewer than 10 people, advancing step by step from materials and structures to mass production processes. In 2021, they successfully developed a prototype. With no ready-made mass production path to refer to globally, they blazed their own trail, failing time and again, and starting over repeatedly. It was not until 2023 that the company's products basically reached mass production.
"Looking back now, we were really holding our breath and pushing hard in our research back then; in fact, it was very likely to fail," Meng Mingqiang said with a smile.
Fortunately, years of hard work finally led to a breakthrough. As the flexible soft rehabilitation robot products gradually matured, Sirrem Medical began to attract capital attention. In 2023, the company completed a financing of tens of millions of CNY, led by Furong Capital. In 2025, the company completed a new round of financing of tens of millions of CNY, led by Bohua Capital.
Building a Platform-based Enterprise and Constructing Core Technological Barriers
Today, Sirrem Medical is far from being a company that only produces a single product.
Meng Mingqiang believes that the BCI rehabilitation industry chain requires upstream and downstream collaboration to build an industrial ecosystem and establish a standardized flexible soft rehabilitation robot technology platform. It is precisely relying on the platform capabilities of flexible soft rehabilitation robots that Sirrem Medical has quickly established cooperation with top domestic BCI enterprises.
Sirrem Medical has deployed in the fields of invasive BCI, non-invasive BCI, and closed-loop BCI, forming standardized platform solutions, establishing the technological foundation for BCI, flexible rehabilitation robots, and remote cloud platforms, and building a full-cycle, full-scenario rehabilitation solution.
In Meng Mingqiang's view, Sirrem Medical's most core barrier is the flexible soft rehabilitation robot. Rehabilitation scenarios have extremely stringent requirements for equipment; the hand function flexible rehabilitation robot must be both soft and tough. It must be able to achieve finger bending of over 270 degrees, withstand 100,000 repeated uses, and find a balance among being lightweight, safe, mass-producible, and cost-controllable.
To meet these requirements, the Sirrem team has independently mastered everything from materials and structures to mass production processes. Meng Mingqiang emphasized, "From raw materials to finished products, the entire chain is in our own hands." Currently, Sirrem Medical is the only flexible soft rehabilitation robot company in China that meets the fine control requirements of invasive BCIs.
This capability has also been verified in clinical practice. The first patient in China to receive a semi-invasive BCI implant at Peking University First Hospital used his mind to drink water and picked up a strawberry with his own hands one year after the surgery. The first subject to receive a BCI implant in Shanghai was able to hold a pen to write and pinch pills after one year of rehabilitation. Behind these milestone cases, the rehabilitation execution end was supported by Sirrem Medical.
The Future: Making Rehabilitation Accessible to All
The rehabilitation sector that Sirrem Medical focuses on is a severely underestimated track.
As the aging population deepens, the state's attention to rehabilitation continues to increase. From the "Healthy China 2030" Planning Outline, to the inclusion of BCI in the future industries of the "15th Five-Year Plan", until the joint release of the "Three-Year Action Plan for Expanding Capacity and Improving Quality of the Rehabilitation Assistive Devices Industry" by multiple departments in 2026, the entire industry is ushering in an explosive growth period.
However, for patients, the real rehabilitation needs may lie not only within hospitals but also outside them.
In-hospital rehabilitation resources need to be extended outward, while there is a massive unmet demand for home rehabilitation outside hospitals.
This dilemma is being broken. In the past, medical insurance barely covered home rehabilitation. Today, new insurance types such as long-term care insurance are accelerating their implementation, and many places have begun to pilot medical insurance payments for home and in-home rehabilitation. "Once the payment channel is opened, effective and highly cost-effective approaches like ours will usher in huge market space," said Meng Mingqiang.
To tap into the vast market, Sirrem Medical has deployed its strategies in two major directions.
On the product side, the company will promote the registration and certification of its self-developed wearable home BCI rehabilitation products, and gradually push them into clinical practice and the market, allowing more patients to enjoy high-quality services at low prices. At the same time, they are also actively promoting their products to the global rehabilitation market.
On the service side, Sirrem Medical has developed a BCI cloud rehabilitation platform to solve the pain point of interrupted rehabilitation after patients are discharged. Through Sirrem Medical's BCI cloud rehabilitation platform, patients at home can receive professional rehabilitation service guidance from rehabilitation physicians in Grade 3A hospitals at less than one-tenth of the average monthly cost of traditional hospitalization.
Thus, from in-hospital to out-of-hospital, and from products to services, Sirrem Medical's deployment now covers the entire rehabilitation chain.
Ten years have passed, and Meng Mingqiang has grown from a young entrepreneur into a veteran who has deeply cultivated the rehabilitation sector for many years. Sirrem Medical has also transformed laboratory technology into a leading technology platform in the field of BCI rehabilitation.
The further he goes, the clearer Meng Mingqiang is about why he set out in the first place. "Making rehabilitation accessible to all and ensuring health for everyone." This is not only Sirrem's vision but also Meng Mingqiang's original aspiration that has remained unchanged over his ten years of entrepreneurship. From the laboratories of Shanghai Jiao Tong University to hundreds of hospitals across the country, from flexible rehabilitation robots to the BCI cloud rehabilitation platform, Sirrem Medical is making this vision a reality step by step.
Sirrem : Letting the light of hope nourish thousands of households.
Text | Na Yun Editor | Yi Da