Robotic surgery attracts new entrants in minimally invasive surgery quest

Print 29 December 2015
Varun Saxena / FierceMedicalDevices

The trend toward robotic surgery will accelerate thanks to a plethora of aspirants who aim to advance their device through R&D or achieve commercialization in the upcoming year. Robotic surgery is the latest means toward a long-standing end: less invasive surgery.

Market leader Intuitive Surgical's ($ISRG) versatile Da Vinci will face increased competition, but Wall Street analysts from Leerink believe it has a large "moat"that will protect it from the new players throughout the year, and likely longer.

Medtronic ($MDT) said it plans to launch its first foray into the arena in the spring or summer by "tying Covidien's interventional surgical devices to robotic equipment that's under development."

Meanwhile, Medtech S.A. recently announced a $15 million financing, as the French robotic surgery company commercializes its FDA-cleared device for neurosurgery across the world and seeks U.S. approval of its spinal surgery device. And Medrobotics has raised $25 million to launch the system Flex Robotic System in U.S. hospitals. With its flexible scope, it's intended to ;provide an alternative to traditional line-of-sight approaches used to access and visualize the oropharynx, hypopharynx and larynx.

Their offering appears to be more specialized than the DaVinci, which is for general surgery, though some procedures like hernia repair and colorectal surgery are predominant.

In the orthopedics arena, Stryker ($SYK) will be kept busy with the launch of total knee replacements on its Mako robot. The company received FDA's permission for the new indication in October, but the rollout of the new robotic procedure is proceeding gradually.

On the R&D front, Titan Medical just announced it is licensing know-how and technology from the Mayo Clinic to improve its development-stage Sport Surgical System for performing colorectal surgery.

Verily (formerly Google Life Sciences)/Johnson & Johnson ($JNJ) joint venture Verb Surgical appears to have the most ambitious robotic surgery plans, though commercialization won't occur in 2016.

"We rely on the dexterity of human surgeons but now we know machines are quite a bit more precise than humans," former Verily science Babak Parviz, said in December. "Using a machine opens up opportunities for surgeries that are not even possible with a normal human hand." 

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