Surgical robotics archives - 3 lessons from the early days of the ROSA

Lessons learnt from Dr. Blondel on the ROSA system:

"13 years ago the ROSA robot version 1.0 was used for the first time by surgeons at Nice University Hospital in France to perform stereotactic brain biopsies.
It's only later that this technology found its first sweet spot: #epilepsy in the pediatric population.
When children have medically refractory epilepsy, they can suffer from many seizures a day. The ROSA robot is helping neurosurgeons detect the source of seizures through implanting a dozen of thin electrodes deep inside the brain.
This procedure called stereo EEG offers a unique advantage over the traditional surgical approach: it is far #lessinvasive than the very large opening in the skull that was required to expose the brain and place strips or grids onto the surface.
The electrodes deep in the brain give a more complete 3D understanding of the seizures places of origin. But without a robot, the procedure is very challenging and time consuming.
Over the last several years in the US, epilepsy monitoring has seen a strong shift from open strips & grids approach to minimally-invasive stereo-EEG approach. No doubt that #robotics played a major role in this shift: around 75% of sEEG procedures are done robotically.
Today, the ROSA technology is used in over 60% of Level 4 epilepsy centers in the US.
Three lessons I still draw today from this experience of introducing a new robotic technology to a market:

1. Design your robotic technology right from the start as a toolbox and put it asap in the hand of the physicians. Daily clinical use and deep understanding from the user of what the technology can do will soon enough pinpoint what is your sweet spot.
2. Be ready to iterate. Provide strong on-site support to help physicians go quickly past the learning curve and to collect as much user feedbacks as you can. And whatever your plans for the future were, be ready to adjust and to do it quickly. Hold your first ideas lightly as they might not be the best product-market fit.
3. Provide a lot of value for the sweet spot indication you identified. Preplanning with the power of image fusion, speed to move from one electrode to the other, integration into the surgical workflow, wide compatibility with equipment, ability to control the procedure effectiveness, etc.

You want to help physicians before, during and after the procedure with software, hardware and workflow solutions tailored for the specific challenges they face for this indication.

Let engineers design the technology.
Let physicians define how to best use the technology."

Source: LinkedIn