Johnson & Johnson last year acquired Auris Health, whose Monarch system is used to treat lung cancer. Source: J&J
During its fourth-quarter earnings call yesterday, Johnson & Johnson said it will give a preview of its robotic and digital surgery plans at a Medical Device Business Review Day that it is planning for May 13 in New York.
“We think it will provide a very clear, transparent kind of tangible evidence of not only the machines but also the digital platform component of this as well,” CEO Alex Gorsky said of the upcoming event.
Robot-assisted surgery is presently a hot area in medtech and healthcare — with Medtronic, TransEnterix, Virtual Incision, and others seeking to take on Intuitive Surgical, the dominant company in the space.
Late last year, J&J announced its purchase of the remaining stake in Verb Surgical, following what it described as a successful strategic collaboration with Verily, the life-sciences unit of Alphabet Inc. Alphabet is best known as the parent organization of Google.
Verb Surgical was founded in 2015 and is taking on market leader Intuitive Surgical.
Other Johnson & Johnson acquisitions
Last February, J&J’s Ethicon subsidiary acquired Auris Health Inc. for $3.4 billion, picking up surgical robotics pioneer Dr. Fred Moll’s newest robotic surgical play and its Monarch platform, which the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved in March 2018. Auris had raised $220 million in November 2018.
“We think combining Auris and Verb really helps ensure that we have a very strong role in the next generation of the digital surgery platform and ongoing development,” Gorsky said.
A year earlier, the company acquired Orthotaxy, a French company working on robotic knee replacement.
Editor’s note: For more coverage of the medical device industry, visit WTWH Media sibling site MassDevice.com. See also our coverage from the recent Healthcare Robotics Engineering Forum, which was co-located with DeviceTalks West.
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