J&J Ottava - a long journey

J&J submitted Ottava for de novo classification in January 2026 and announced the authorization on July 22. The most important features of Ottava being: 

• • "Built to open new possibilities in surgery, OTTAVA creates a new category in soft tissue robotics  
• • System authorized for use in multiple procedures in general surgery within the upper abdomen  
• • System features are designed to enable surgical teams and hospitals to expand OR capacity, streamline clinical workflows, and elevate surgical performance."

"Ottava's most distinctive feature is structural: its four robotic arms are integrated directly into a standard-size surgical table, rather than mounted on a separate boom or cart. When not in use, the arms stow beneath the table surface. According to J&J's published specifications, this configuration reduces the system's OR footprint by 30 to 50 percent compared to traditional cart-mounted systems—an engineering tradeoff that matters specifically in smaller operating rooms, ambulatory surgery centers, and hospital systems trying to expand robotic procedure capacity without rebuilding their ORs.

A second architectural feature, which J&J calls twin-motion, synchronizes table and arm movement, allowing surgical teams to reposition the patient during a procedure without manually readjusting each robotic arm. In multi-quadrant operations—the most complex general surgery cases—this reduces the time and human effort required to shift from one anatomical region to another. The system connects to J&J's Polyphonic digital ecosystem, which integrates learning resources, surgical video, and data-driven performance analytics."

"According to Prof. Shafi Ahmed, its story really begins with a company that no longer exists:

In 2015, Johnson & Johnson and Google created Verb Surgical, one of the most ambitious ventures in the history of digital surgery. The vision was compelling: combine robotics, AI, advanced imaging, machine learning and cloud connectivity to create an intelligent operating platform rather than simply another surgical robot.  It was ahead of its time.
I was one of only 4 surgeons invited to visit Google in 2017 to meet the team and give advice on the robot. It was undoubtedly ambitious but also really fragmented. The Google team were thinking of a moonshot and in my opinion overthinking the product. Johnson and Johnson needed a robust robot into the market quickly to compete.
Despite enormous investment and some of the brightest engineering talent in the world, Verb was dissolved in 2020. To some, it looked like failure. I saw it differently. Innovation in surgery is rarely linear.
Technologies mature, strategies evolve, and organisations learn. Many of the ideas, engineering capabilities and lessons from Verb did not disappear. They were absorbed into Johnson & Johnson's broader surgical robotics programme and have helped shape Ottava. 
Ottava enters a very different market today. Robotic surgery is no longer dominated by a single player. Competition is increasing rapidly, AI is becoming embedded into surgical workflows, and hospitals are beginning to think beyond robotic arms towards integrated digital operating rooms. 
The real question is not whether Ottava can compete with existing robotic systems.
It is whether it can become an intelligent surgical platform that combines robotics, data, AI and workflow into a single ecosystem. The history of innovation reminds us that first attempts do not always succeed. Sometimes the most important achievement is not the first product, but the knowledge gained along the way. Verb may have disappeared as a company, but its influence on the future of digital surgery may only now be becoming visible through Ottava.

In technology, endings are often just the beginning of the next chapter." 

Source: J&J, LinkedIn