Mako Surgical Shows off its Haptics During AAOS

Maurice Ferre’s goal is to have Mako Surgical’s robotic assisted surgery in every hospital in the next five years. “A lot of our business is in small hospitals, and our popularity comes from patient demand."

Mako’s robotic arm, the RIO, is a tool for performing partial knee surgeries. It uses haptics to simulate the feel for surgeons and give force feedback to help the surgeon control the tools while preparing the surface of the bone for the implant. “They’ve tried to do surgery manually,” says Ferre, “but our system takes the guess work out of the process.”

Mako’s clinical studies bear out Ferre’s claim. In five years the company has conducted 23,000 procedures . Two-year data comparing British and Swedish registries show that the failure rate of RIO is 9 times better than that of manual surgical procedures.

At AAOS 2013, Make also released the results of its latest study, which demonstrates that RIO is 3 times more accurate in placement than manual surgeries. “Even more important,” notes Ferre, “the data show that pain scores were significantly reduced compared with manual surgery, even after 3 months.”

RIO is a robotic arm that emphasizes workflow efficiency that is part of MAKOplasty suite. Right now the company has 156 robots worldwide and Ferre says that number will continue to grow. “We’re a fast growing company,” Ferre says.
 

Heather Thompson

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