Chris Newmarker

July 4, 2016

2 Min Read
Surgical Sensors and Robots Evolve

Surgery is increasingly becoming digital amid new robotic surgery entrants, and those systems rely on novel technologies such as Chicago-based Briteseed's Safesnips, says Craig Scherer, senior partner at Insight Product Development and director of the Insight Accelerator Labs. (Briteseed is a Insight Accelerator Labs charter member.) Briteseed's low-cost optical sensors integrate directly into the jaws of surgical dissectors and energy tools, providing real-time information back to surgeons. Such information could make surgeons more efficient and limit poor surgical outcomes.

"This trend of providing 'insurance' to minimize negative outcomes has enormous potential to lower overall cost of care," Scherer says.

At the recent IATIBIOMED 2016 in Israel, Devicix's Bill Betten noticed that there were companies with robotic systems very different from the large and expensive systems exemplified by Intuitive Surgical's daVinci robits. Such systems--ranging from snake-like robotic systems to instruments that assisted in instrument placement and alignment to systems that enabled surgeries that might previously have proven difficult or impossible to perform--seemed to be in the "middle ground of assisted surgery with a distinctly practical feel from the perspective of utility, cost, and practicality." The Mazor Robotics Renaissance Guidance System, for example, is meant to improve outcomes in such spine procedures as degenerative repair, pedicle screw fixation for complex spinal deformity, and vertebral augmentation.

"If daVinci represents the first generation and perhaps a system that is toward the high end, perhaps the next generation is the next logical stage of the evolution, demonstrating a migration to the smaller scale, more affordable robotic-assisted surgeries," says Betten, who is director of business solutions at Devicix (Eden Prairie, MN). (See Betten discuss remote patient monitoring at MD&M Minneapolis, September 21-22, 2016 in Minneapolis.)

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[Image courtesy of Briteseed]

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