In what sounds more like the opening scene from a B-grade sci-fi/horror flick, head transplant operations performed entirely by robotic surgeons could be coming to a hospital near you within a decade, if startup BrainBridge is to be believed.

It’s the brainchild – pun very much intended – of Hashem Al-Ghaili, the Berlin-based molecular biologist turned film-maker, producer, author and science communicator who you might remember from 2022 when he proposed a futuristic, rather dystopian artificial-womb baby-making factory called EctoLife.