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You’ll see a lot of surgical robotics talk at this year’s DeviceTalks Boston. Surgical robots are smaller, smarter, and being launched into space. 2024 is going to be a huge year — here’s why.

I believe 2024 will be remembered as the year when the surgical robotics sector — not just one company — planted both feet on the ground, slowly rose up, and stood tall in the medical device industry.

Why? I’ll give you five reasons:

1. FDA approval of the da Vinci 5

The approval and slow release of the next-generation da Vinci 5 reasserted Intuitive Surgical’s dominance. It may have also changed the business.

In our DeviceTalks Weekly interview, Joe Mullings, chair and CEO of The Mullings Group, an executive search firm that has worked extensively in the sector, said competitors building large surgical robotic units will have a difficult time keeping up with the da Vinci 5’s new features. 

But the bigger impact may be a smaller footprint and new leasing arrangement that could open up markets in smaller healthcare facilities to Intuitive.

“Robotic-assisted surgery-as-a-service is what Intuitive is pushing here,” Mullings said.

The interview is available on DeviceTalks.com, a sibling site to The Robot Report, or the DeviceTalks YouTube channel.

2. The emergence of smaller consoles

Intuitive’s move isn’t likely to impede companies that have built — and are obtaining regulatory approval for — smaller systems that open up the market for surgical robotic systems.

On May 2, I’ll talk with the senior executive team at CMR Surgical — CEO Supratim Bose, Chief Medical Officer Mark Slack, and Chief Technology Officer Luke Hares — about their commercial plans for Versius. The modular and portable robot can be moved from one operating room to another and has been used to perform more than 20,000 surgeries across seven specialties.

Co-founders Slack and Hares “created a system that could be adapted to any operating room,” Bose told MassDevice. “The hospitals, in terms of resources and investments overall for the life of this system, find Versius more of a value to them.”

Earlier this year, Virtual Incision grabbed national headlines by sending a version of its MIRA mobile surgical robotic system to the International Space Station. The publicity surrounding this news focused attention on the company’s true goal of making every operating room a surgical robotic suite.

In a DeviceTalks Weekly interview, CEO John Murphy said Virtual Incision’s robotic arm, which is fastened to the surgical table and doesn’t require a base console like other systems, will make robotics possible for integrated delivery networks (IDNs) and ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) that can’t currently afford or accommodate a standard surgical robot.

Similarly, Distalmotion is poised for success with its Dexter robot, which doesn’t require a dedicated room and has disposable instruments that don’t require sterilization after use. CEO Greg Roche, who will speak at DeviceTalks Boston, said the smaller system puts the company in a position to go where patients are seeking care.

3. The drive for remote connection

Virtual Incision’s space excursion aside, surgical robotics companies recognize the importance of remote connection. At DeviceTalks Boston, we’ll have presentations from Intuitive and Medtronic focusing on the long-distance reach of their systems.

But we’re also seeing the emergence of an infrastructure built to support remote surgery. To some, 5G presents the conduit for steady connection. But serial entrepreneur Yulun Wang, who could be described as the founder of the surgical robotics sector, co-founded Sovato Health to develop a different network employing existing infrastructure of fiber-optic cables.

Wang has a knack for getting ahead of trends. He founded Computer Motion in 1990, five years before the launch of Intuitive. The companies would merge 13 years later as a resolution of a patent dispute, freeing Wang to co-found telehealth company nTouch, which was acquired by Teladoc in 2020.

Wang and Sovato co-founder and CEO Cynthia Perazzo said patients are comfortable with remote care, thanks in part to the pandemic. Regulators and hospitals also see the need for surgeons to extend their reach.

“A third of U.S. counties don’t have a single surgeon,” Perazzo said in a recent DeviceTalks Weekly interview.

On the technical side, Sovato execs said the current telecommunication network can handle the traffic. Wang recalled that the world’s first transatlantic surgery performed on a Computer Motion system in 2000 ran on an ATM line monitored by 15 engineers. Today, fiber-optic cables are plentiful.

Finally, robotic surgery companies are building systems that can be controlled remotely. In a DeviceTalks Boston keynote, Brian Miller, executive vice president and chief digital officer at Intuitive Surgical, will cover many of da Vinci’s 5’s new features, including its potential for remote surgery.

At the close of the conference, Rajit Kamal, vice president and general manager of surgical robotics at Medtronic, will demonstrate the remote functionality of Hugo RAS in a joint keynote for attendees of DeviceTalks Boston and the co-located Robotics Summit & Expo.

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4. The power of AI

The ongoing adoption of artificial intelligence will certainly accelerate the development of robot-assisted surgery. AI already has made a massive impact on the medical device industry.

Semiconductor chip giant NVIDIA added a tanker of gasoline to that fire at its 2024 GPU Technology Conference (GTC), launching close to two dozen new AI-powered, healthcare-focused tools and announcing partnerships with GE Healthcare and Johnson & Johnson.

NVIDIA already had been working with Asensus Surgical and Medtronic.

Intuitive’s Miller and Medtronic’s Kamal both intend to cover AI-powered functionality in their DeviceTalks Boston talks.

5. Experienced competition emerging

The surgical robotics sector has been around enough to produce executives who have enjoyed successful outcomes. Now they’re back for more.

Former leaders from Auris Surgical Robotics, for example, are leading startups like Moon Surgical and Noah Medical.

Before becoming Distalmotion’s CEO, Roche served as global president for robotics and technology at Zimmer Biomet, where he led the successful global launch of the ROSA Robotic Knee System.

Quantum Surgical CEO Bertin Nahum led an earlier part of the ROSA story. Nahum founded one of the first successful surgical robotics companies, Medtech S.A., which was sold to Zimmer Biomet in 2016.

Nahum will speak at DeviceTalks Boston about Quantum’s Epione system, an open robotic system that brings image-guided precision to minimally invasive cancer ablation.

Finally, Stryker, one of the more experienced players in surgical robotics and the leader in hard-tissue systems, could be considering a move into soft-tissue robotics.

“We believe we are a great robotics organization,” said Spencer Stiles, group president for orthopedics and spine at Stryker, in an upcoming DeviceTalks podcast. “We remain a passionate M&A company. And so you can imagine our adjacencies, that’s an area that we continue to assess. There’s some neat technology out there for sure.”

Erik Todd, vice president and general manager of robotics and enabling technology at Stryker, will give an update on the MAKO System at DeviceTalks Boston.

So this is why we focused so much of DeviceTalks Boston on surgical robotics, but even I’m surprised at the pace at which the space is moving

If you had asked me in January, I’m not sure I would have said we’d see a new da Vinci approved by the FDA, a surgical robotics system launched into space, and a mid-tier player like Karl Storz looking to change the game by buying a small, but tested, surgical robotics company like Asensus Surgical.

This is 2024. Almost anything can happen. Join us at DeviceTalks Boston to find out what’s next.