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Cambridge-based CMR Surgical, the UK’s largest private company, announced today that it raised $165 million at a valuation of $3 billion. Since rolling out its bots in 2019, CMR Versius system has participated in more than 15,000 procedures globally, covering 130 complex and benign procedure types including colectomies, hernia repairs, hysterectomies, sacrocolpopexies, and lobectomies. CMR Surgical roughly doubled the volume of its surgeries over the past year, announcing the completion of 5,000 procedures in 2022 alone.
According to Financial Times reporting, CMR chief executive Supratim Bose claims that robotic surgery represents only 3.0% to 4.0% of all operations but is already worth more than $7 billion annually. Though that leaves significant room for growth, up to 80% of the market remains dominated by Intuitive Surgical and its da Vinci robotic system. As of Q2 2023, Intuitive’s global installed base had risen to more than 8,000 da Vinci bots, up 13% YoY. Meanwhile, Intuitive brought in revenues of $1.76 billion during the quarter, up 15% YoY, as higher surgery volumes pushed full-year forecasts for total procedure growth to a range of 20% to 22%. That marked a material upgrade from previous estimates of 18% to 21%.
Johnson and Johnson, which partnered with CMR in late 2022, has tried to advance its own ambitions in robotic surgery through several of the company’s medtech ventures, including Ethicon, Auris, and Verb Surgical, but these divisions were forced to cut a combined 349 jobs this year. Auris has received FDA clearance for its Monarch bot to be used in kidney stone removal procedures and bronchoscopies, but its setbacks in developing its advanced, six-armed Ottava system have delayed proposed 2024 FDA approval prospects to 2026.
Semiconductor giant Nvidia recently partnered with Asensus Surgical to advance the latter’s AI and robotic surgical tools. Fierce Biotech reports that Asensus’s laparoscopic Senhance system, approved by the FDA in 2017, was built with Nvidia hardware and the chip company’s suite of AI applications will bolster Asensus’s Intelligent Surgical Unit (ISU). The ISU aids Senhance by automatically shifting the attending surgeon’s camera, zooming, panning and generating 3D measurements as well as image enhancements. According to the company’s latest earnings figures, Asensus experience 27% YoY growth in surgical procedures throughout Q2, with over 1,000 procedures performed globally during that period.
In July, Hackensack University Medical Center, a hospital run by New Jersey’s largest healthcare provider, celebrated the utilization of 25,000 robot-assisted surgeries. The hospital has used Intuitive Surgical’s da Vinci SP system to pioneer work in single-port robotic surgery, which allows our surgeons to perform complex procedures through a single, half-inch incision, Hackensack was the first US hospital to perform 1,000 of these surgeries. Earlier in the year, the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Hospital surpassed a similar milestone of 20,000 robotic surgeries. UAB Hospital has reached an annual pace of 2,300 robotic surgeries performed using the da Vinci system.
Several new devices have been cleared by the FDA this year, including Levita Magnetics’ new MARS surgery platform, which utilizes proprietary magnetic assistance to minimize the number of incisions needed for abdominal surgeries, as well as Insight Medbotics’s IGAR MRI-compatible surgical robot system, the first surgical robot to operate within the bore of an MRI machine, having already been used in clinical studies for breast biopsies.
Levita’s system works by inserting magnets into a patient’s body through the belly button. As MedCityNews writes, the surgeon can then maneuver these objects with magnetic arms outside the patient’s body to retract and manipulate large tissues or an organ, such as the gallbladder, liver, prostate or colon. Smaller and fewer incisions, particularly through the use of robotics in the operating room, has great potential to reduce recovery time and the risk of complications. Results from clinical trials led by scientists at University College London and the University of Sheffield, published in JAMA last year, found that the use of robot-assisted surgery to treat bladder cancer allowed patients to recover much faster and spend 20% less time in the hospital. Robotic surgery also cut the chance of readmission in half and revealed a “striking” four-fold reduction in the prevalence of blood clots.
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