CHICAGO — Last week, products from Intuitive Surgical Inc. won two of the three gold awards in the medical and health category at this year’s International Design Excellence Awards, or IDEA.

The strong showing of robotic systems at the Industrial Designers Society of America’s (IDSA’s) IDEA ceremony here is but another sign that robot-assisted surgery is a hot area in healthcare and medical technology.

Intuitive Surgical remains the dominant surgical robotics company, but a host of other companies is jumping into the market, including Think Surgical, Medtronic PLC, and TransEnterix.

The da Vinci SP surgical robotics system and Ion endoluminal system won the awards for Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Intuitive Surgical. The Ion system received U.S. Food and Drug administration approval in February, and the da Vinci SP received FDA approval for additional procedures in March.

The company also acquired Schölly Fiberoptic‘s robotic endoscope business in July.

To learn more about the 12 medical technologies that won bronze, silver, and gold awards at this year’s IDEA, visit The Robot Report‘s sibling site, MassDevice.

Learn more about medical devices and robotics

Learn more about medical device design, the relevance of corporate culture, how to obtain regulatory approval, and how to enter global markets at DeviceTalks Minnesota in September. In addition, the Healthcare Robotics Engineering Forum will be co-located with DeviceTalks in Silicon Valley in December.

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The Robot Report has launched the Healthcare Robotics Engineering Forum, which will be on Dec. 9-10 in Santa Clara, Calif. The conference and expo focuses on improving the design, development and manufacture of next-generation healthcare robots. Learn more about the Healthcare Robotics Engineering Forum.

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