Surgical robotics trends and how to accelerate adoption

Some of the biggest names in the development of surgical robotics systems and virtual reality training technology discussed robotic surgery trends at DeviceTalks Boston.

Moon Surgical Chief Strategy Officer Jeffery Alvarez, Stryker Digital, Robotics, and Enabling Technologies President Robert Cohen, Osso VR CEO Justin Barad and FundamentalVR CEO and co-founder Richard Vincent see rapid changes ahead for surgical robotics and opportunities to win over surgeons, health systems and patients.

We’ve curated excerpts from the conversation, lightly edited for clarity and space.

Trends in surgical robotics

Alvarez: “There’s a transition from building robots that are hyper-specialized in one thing and do one thing really well, to platforms that are looking at how to solve bigger parts of the problem: How do we solve systematic issues in the operating room and develop platforms that work across a variety of procedures? That’s a big trend that we’re seeing now. When you look at architectures like CMR’s Versius or Medtronic’s Hugo, they’re moving toward trying to have some more of that adaptability to support more operations.”

Cohen:  “At Stryker — 45,000 people, almost $20 billion of sales — two years ago we spun off this new division that I’m proud to be part of called Digital, Robotics and Enabling Technologies. If you think about a company that’s somewhat conservative — Stryker’s been around for 80 years — doing something that disruptive to create a brand-new technology division within the company, that shows you it’s the times, right? It’s not necessarily just about implant designs anymore, it’s more about the technologies that help personalize medicine, help pre-op plan, better execute the plan. But for a company like Stryker to be able to do that and being so disruptive with things changing so fast, I’m proud that Stryker came to that conclusion. I’m proud to be part of this division, but I think it shows you where medtech is headed.

Stryker on steroids: How enabling technology will supercharge surgical robotics

Barad: “There’s an overwhelming number of procedures we need to learn and much longer learning curves. What’s becoming a big issue today is staff variability. So every surgery we’re doing, we’re often working with a different team. … You’re working with someone new every single day, and maybe they’ve never done orthopedic surgery before, general surgery before or any surgery before. Getting them up to speed quickly becomes a challenge. There are so many different varieties of robotic equipment out there. They’re getting upgraded on the fly and it’s almost like an entirely different surgery. So there’s a lot of challenges around training.”

Cohen: “The patients have changed over the decades. In 2010, if you were going for a total hip or total knee procedure, it was probably your children who were doing the investigation for you on the internet. Now that we’ve evolved and you have people getting at implants at an earlier age, people want to be more active and they go search online. Go look [online for] a Mako total knee and one of the first things you’re going see is better patient satisfaction. … We’ve been strong, loud and proud about accuracy and precision. … Once surgeons say, ‘I do a better job when I have a Mako robot and I am executing the plan I want,’ we’ve seen patient adoption, and they remember that those patients will actually repeat that. They feel better. They feel that they got a higher precision surgery because of a robot.”

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Accelerating the adoption of surgical robotics

Cohen: “If you address clinical issues, the market segment will grow. If you address two clinical issues, you will have a following. Mako started back in 2006 with a partial knee. It really did remarkable for a partial knee, but the indications are very narrow for a partial knee, and you didn’t get a lot of volume for that procedure, so you didn’t get a lot of podium time. It didn’t have enough interest. Hips evolved, but the hips were a little bit challenging to explain what the clinical issues were. In other words, a hip patient who may be walking with a limp is not necessarily in pain as much. The tipping point was in 2017 when Stryker released commercially the total knee application…

Read more at our sister site, Medical Design & Outsourcing.