|
Hearken to this text  |
Intuitive President Dave Rosa. | Supply: Intuitive
Intuitive Surgical President Dave Rosa says he doesn’t get too excited by the thought of higher robotic surgical procedure graspers or extra versatile wrists.
As a substitute, Rosa recognized two technological alternatives which might be going to advance surgical robotics and minimally invasive surgical procedure in a serious approach: improved visualization for surgeons and focal remedy.
“How can we assist surgeons see extra about what they’re doing? … That, to me, is a large piece of the puzzle going ahead that I’m actually enthusiastic about,” Rosa mentioned in an interview with DeviceTalks Editorial Director Tom Salemi for our IntuitiveTalks podcast.
RoboBusiness: Intuitive President Dave Rosa will give a keynote interview in Santa Clara, California on Oct. 19.
Bettering visualization
The distinction between the very best and worst surgeons isn’t who can manipulate the instrument higher, Rosa mentioned, however slightly who has higher anatomical information with regard to tissue planes, the subtleties of the place bleeding would possibly or may not occur, and the situation of nerves or constructions just like the ureter.
The query is how can system builders assist surgeons in order that they don’t want 1,000 instances to be taught that form of anatomical variation, Rosa mentioned.
“Fluorescence-guided surgical procedure is an enormous piece of this puzzle, the place you may inject a fluorescing marker into the physique and utilizing infrared lasers within the system, it lights up. It’s fairly superb,” Rosa mentioned. “We now have a molecule in improvement that’s particular to prostate most cancers, for instance. You possibly can inject the drug, activate the infrared laser, and see the prostate most cancers. And if the surgeon has resected the prostate however occurs to go away some behind, they’ll return and resect that and work for a adverse margin. That’s not doable in white mild imaging.”
Rosa additionally talked about hyperspectral imaging amongst different visualization applied sciences that may assist surgeons higher perceive what they’re taking a look at.
Intuitive’s Da Vinci system already has an built-in functionality known as Firefly that makes use of near-infrared fluorescence imaging to assist surgeons with cholecystectomy (gallbladder elimination).
“Surgeons are utilizing Firefly simply to verify they perceive the anatomy. So now they’ll go in — in each case, each affected person — assured that they’ll end it minimally invasive,” Rosa mentioned. “They’ve nice imaging and so they have nice instruments to do even a really troublesome gallbladder that will have very troublesome anatomy, whereas earlier than they could go in and get it achieved generally, and never others and should convert to open.”
Focal remedy
Intuitive’s Flexision biopsy needle takes samples from deep contained in the lung with the Ion robot-assisted endoluminal system. | Supply: Intuitive
The second space Rosa highlighted is focal remedy, a much less invasive remedy for prostate most cancers. Focal remedy makes use of real-time imaging and ablation to destroy small tumors, minimizing the prevalence or severity of unwanted side effects from extra conventional oncology therapies.
“As work is being achieved outdoors of Intuitive for liquid biopsy, higher imaging, you see that most cancers may be detected earlier, when it’s smaller and never symptomatic,” Rosa mentioned. “If that’s true and you purchase that as a thesis — I don’t suppose we’d argue that — it needs to be doable to deal with it earlier, too, if we are able to localize it.”
That sort of localized, centered remedy could possibly be a superb match for surgical robotics and its benefits of precision and entry. Rosa supplied Intuitive’s Ion robotic-assisted bronchoscopy platform for instance of how to probably ship focal remedy to tumors elsewhere within the physique.
With Ion, he mentioned, “you may rise up into a number of generations of the lung, discover a small lesion. Right this moment it’s doing biopsy. However there’s a number of work being achieved in easy methods to ablate it.”
Intuitive as a minimally invasive care firm
Intuitive is the world’s Twenty second-largest medical system producer, in accordance with our newest Medtech Large 100 rating of system firms by income. However Focal remedy and imaging know-how for robotic surgical procedures are two examples of how Rosa doesn’t consider Intuitive as a robotics firm and possibly not even a medical system firm, however extra of a minimally invasive care firm.
“It goes past the system, proper? You possibly can increase that time period, however take into consideration all of the digital features of what’s occurring: the combination of knowledge, how we would use knowledge, that isn’t essentially the standard definition of a tool firm, proper? You’re often promoting some piece of {hardware} that has to go get sterilized. I’ve a minimally invasive care firm that appears throughout a spectrum of superior applied sciences and may combine these up in a approach that’s simply going to make a distinction.”
Hearken to the entire IntuitiveTalks interview right here.
Editor’s Be aware: This text was syndicated from our sister publication Medical Design & Outsourcing.
