Intuitive Surgical demonstrates telesurgery capabilities

Intuitive demonstrated its telesurgery capabilities by remotely connecting two surgeons to perform a transatlantic demonstration at the Society of Robotic Surgery conference in Strasbourg, France. This event involved Doug Stoddard, MD, located in Peachtree Corners, GA, and Andrea Pakula, MD, located remotely in Strasbourg, France. Together, using a dual console da Vinci 5 system, they performed a telesurgery procedure on an advanced tissue model developed by Intuitive to replicate the behavior of live tissue. During the demonstration, Stoddard, whose console was alongside the da Vinci 5 patient cart and tissue model, was able to pass control of surgical instruments back and forth remotely to Pakula, located at the remote surgeon console. This included Force Feedback, enabling both surgeons to feel the forces exerted on the advanced tissue model by the instruments, despite being more than 4,000 miles apart. Speaking at the SRS conference, Intuitive CEO Dave Rosa said: “Telesurgery is an area Intuitive has been thoughtfully innovating in for many years. It is a capability that has the potential to improve patient access to minimally invasive care, but its success depends on careful development in several areas. At Intuitive we’ve built robotic surgical technology from the ground up and our focus has always been patient safety and delivering real value-not technology for technology’s sake. For 30 years, we’ve created products that help healthcare providers deliver better care, improve clinician and care team experiences, and drive efficiencies in care delivery. Telesurgery is just one part of our telecollaboration suite, which includes telementoring, teleproctoring, and dual console surgery, that can help clinical teams to improve outcomes and reduce the total cost of care. It’s exciting to see progress, but we’re clear there’s still a long way to go.”