Medical Robotics Symposium in Taiwan

The 2011 International Symposium in Minimally Invasive Surgery and Medical Robotics took place in Taipei, at the National Taiwan University and at IRCAD in Changua with a focus on the broader field of CIS and MIS. Lectures were organized along three topics: Clinical Applications, Industry Update, Technology Development and Innovation Roadmap. The first day was mostly attended by a mixed crowd to engineers, medical professionals and politicians, while the second day was targeted at the medical staff of AITS. The speakers came from all over the world to given an overview of their projects and the state-of-the-art:

• Robotic Surgery in Hepatobiliary and Pancreas; Dr. Michael Li
• What we have been learning from Robotic Urology Surgery-Experience of 472 cases for six years at Taichung Veterans General Hospital; Dr. Yen-Chuan Ou
• History, Present, Future of Robotic Surgery; Robert Lee
• Innovative Products for NOTES & Associated Procedures; Anna Fritz
• Future trends and opportunities in Robot Assisted Minimally Invasive Surgery; Tamas Haidegger
• The State of the art of Surgical Robotics; Chin-Hsing Kuo
• Overview and Trend of Medical Robotics Research in Japan; Kitaro Yoshimitsu
• Experiences and future developments in EU FP7 projects in MIS technology; Mauro Sette
• Market analysis in MIS and Medical Robotics; Eva Tsai
• Regulation affairs of Medical Robotics; Sandy Liu
• Vesalius Robot: a seed for the future; Hsiao-Wei Tang

The presentations were followed by a Strategy Forum where national leaders and decision makers shared their views and discussed development directions for Taiwan. All praises to Hsiao-Wei Tang for flawlessly organizing this great event.