Dr. Gary Guthart, President and CEO, Intuitive Surgical
Twenty years after the first robotic-assisted surgical device was wheeled into an operating room, more than a dozen companies are heading to hospitals with new robotic systems. This is a truly remarkable development given that many—including some of the companies that are now working on robotics programs—have previously discounted the technology as a passing fad in healthcare. But new entrants need to keep a few things in mind to succeed.
Having the benefit of the past twenty years and as we gaze into the future, it is clear that robotic-assisted surgery has become far too important to ignore.
Roughly every minute of every day, a da Vinci robotic-assisted surgery begins. Significant growth in the use of this technology has resulted in more than 3 million procedures having been performed globally to date. While the field has seen tremendous growth, it is still early in its evolution, with independent analysts expecting the use of surgical robots to more than double by 2020.
