Robot-assisted surgery: Virtual Incision looks to grow by shrinking

Robot-assisted surgery is a hot space, dominated by large machines that resemble their automated, automotive-assembly-line ancestors: Large craning arms, industrial hydraulics with an array of tools, all hunched over an operating table. But a newly spun-out medical device company from the University of Nebraska, Virtual Incision, is looking to change that. The company, based out of both Pleasanton, Calif., and Lincoln, Neb., is developing a much smaller robot for minimally invasive surgeries, designed to operate from the inside out. The new, smaller robotic system is inserted through a single abdominal incision, where it works entirely within the body of the patient. CEO John Murphy spoke to MassDevice.com about Virtual Incision’s drive to change robotic surgery, as well as a recently raised $11 million to fund their efforts. “The companies that have come before have done an amazing job pioneering the field of robot-assisted surgery. We think it’s here to stay, and there are a lot of well-known benefits to it. But we felt that, rather than mainframe-like robots, much smaller devices could allow much greater access and are much better suited to general surgery. So we really focused on building a general surgery platform, where the surgeon can be close to the patient,” Murphy told us. Virtual Incision wanted to create a robot-assisted surgery platform that would work for surgeons, instead of making surgeons work for it, and designed its system to be tran...
Source: Mass Device - Category: Medical Equipment Authors: Tags: Business/Financial News Robot-Assisted Surgery Virtual Incision Corp. Source Type: news