Surgery and Surgical Robotics

 Two and a half years ago, employees at THINK Surgical, a robotic surgery development company in Fremont, California, were cleaning out a storage unit near their headquarters when they found an object that appeared to be an old robot arm. Upon closer look, Micah Forstein, an assistant manager at the company, realized that the arm…

            Caesarea, Israel-based Mazor Robotics named Yuval Yanai to the company’s board of directors, effective immediately. Here are four notes: Mr. Yanai brings 30 years of medical device industry experience to Mazor. He has served as director for a number of publicly traded companies including Nasdaq in New York City,…

Robotic surgery units available on the market right now are not technically “robots,” according to Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) worldwide medical devices chairman Gary Pruden. But Verb Surgical, J&J’s joint venture with Google parent Alphabet‘s (NSDQ:GOOGL) Verily Life Sciences, will be looking to produce a system that is truly robotic, and that will help improve surgical outcomes worldwide. According to…

TransEnterix (NYSE:TRXC) is betting that the haptics technology in its Senhance robot-assisted surgery platform will help it make headway against Intuitive Surgical (NSDQ:ISRG) and its 10-year lead on the market. CEO Todd Pope told MassDevice.com that the Senhance’s haptics – the system’s ability to convey a sense of touch and resistance to the surgeon – are an…

Since 2000, California-based Intuitive Surgical has dominated the world of robot-assisted surgery. Its da Vinci system has logged well over two million surgical procedures. Now, however, a Massachusetts startup called Medrobotics has launched a system of its own that features a design that could make robots a much more common fixture in operating rooms. Rather…

When Teddy Ward fell down a California hillside and suffered a traumatic brain injury about two years ago, he lost nearly 50 percent of his skull. After doctors weren’t able to repair it, they instead gave him a 3-D printed life-like skull that has helped him get back to being an ordinary first-grader, CBS Los…

 By Sandra G. Boodman They are a little-known presence in many operating rooms, offering technical expertise to surgeons installing new knees, implanting cardiac defibrillators or performing delicate spine surgery. Often called device reps — or by the more cumbersome and less transparent moniker “health-care industry representatives” — these salespeople are employed by the companies that make…

TransEnterix is a late stage surgical robotics company founded in 2006. The company is dedicated to improving clinical outcomes through the use of robotics in surgery. TransEnterix acquired the surgical robotics division of SOFAR S.p.A in 2015 which included the TELELAP ALF-X advanced robotic system. TransEnterix is now focusing on commercialization of this platform as…

Surgical robots are used in only about one in 20 spine procedures today, but adoption could grow rapidly according to a recent survey by RBC Capital Markets. U.S. spine surgeons expect that rate to double over the next year, and a decade from now more than one in four spine surgeries could be performed using…

Intuitive Surgical’s da Vinci robot is a technical marvel. Nearly half a million operations were performed in the U.S. by surgeons controlling its large, precise arms last year. One in four U.S. hospitals has one or more of the machines, which perform the majority of robotic surgeries worldwide and are credited with making minimally invasive…