New, Improved and Cheaper Too: Robotic Surgery
December 13, 2016 | Terry Sharrer
The piece has more titillation than information, but it describes a potential disruptive innovation in the already innovative field of robotic surgery. Verb Surgical, Inc. (Mountain View, CA) is developing a more dexterous, “smarter,” and less expensive robot than Intuitive Surgical’s “da Vinci” robot. (Only 3.4 miles separate the two companies on El Camino Real). This piece mentions Verb’s compact robotic wrist, machine learning, advanced visualization, and data analytics, though none in detail. Still, these advances suggest surgical robots with automation possibilities, where one operator might be managing more than one machine—which would be a dramatic change in hospitals’ business models. MORE
Image Credit: YouTube, Verb Surgical