Surgical robotics are all the rage right now. Attracting huge investment from the biggest names in healthcare devices, the use of robots in surgery has the potential to change the industry in some really profound and exciting ways. However, some have criticised their implementation as an unnecessary expense when humans can perform these tasks just as well. This episode of Invent: Health will see our guests debate the efficacy and effectiveness of surgical robotics, seeing whether it’s the future of surgery, or just tech for tech’s sake. We’ll also look to the future to see how big an impact this is going to have in the coming years.
Find out on this week’s episode of Invent: Health from TTP.
This Week’s Guests
Dr. Paul Galluzzo has worked at TTP for the past 18 years. Before that, he did a PhD in mechanical engineering at Cambridge included building a robot to play the cello very accurately. Since then, he has worked across a wide range of markets and products at TTP, from gardening tools to DNA sequencing to inkjet. Inkjet was a fruitful pathway into ultrasound imaging, and ultrasound was in turn a gateway into medical technology about ten years ago. He now specialises mostly in the technology enablers in med-tech: navigation, visualisation, critical structure detection, energy delivery, implants, and of course surgical robotics.
Dr. Dwight Meglan, whose doctorate is in Mechanical Engineering, has worked on complex medical systems for more than 25 years as part of teams at a number of high technology medical startups as well as major medical device companies. As a result, he has worked on eight commercial surgical robots (NOTES, abdominal/thoracic, endovascular, electrophysiology, cardiac, gastrointestinal), multiple unique medical devices, as well as numerous surgical simulators combining real-time computational physics, VR/AR displays and custom haptics interfaces. His early work was in orthopedic biomechanics at Ohio State with a postdoc at Mayo Clinic where he turned down a tenure track position so he could stay involved in hands-on work.
Dr. Mark Slack is the Chief Medical Officer and one of the co-founders of CMR Surgical, a global surgical robotics company that has developed Versius, a next-generation robotic system used to perform keyhole surgery. Today, Versius is being used in routine clinical practice to deliver high quality surgical care to patients around the world. Mark qualified in Medicine from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg and completed his postgraduate training in Obstetrics & Gynaecology at the University of Cape Town. During this time he was awarded the prestigious Daubenton Gold Medal from the College of Medicine of South Africa. Mark established the Urogynaecology service at Addenbrooke’s Hospital which has recognised accreditation by the British Society of Urogynaecology. He is also on the Editorial Board for the journal ‘BMJ Surgery, Innovation and Health Technology’. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and an official spokesperson for the college.
