Verb Surgical, Johnson & Johnson‘s (NYSE:JNJ) joint venture with Google parent Alphabet‘s (NSDQ:GOOGL) Verily Life Sciences, said today that it debuted its 1st digital surgery prototype to its collaboration partners at Ethicon Endo-Surgery and J&J.
Robotic surgery, a fast growing field dominated by Intuitive Surgical (NSDQ:ISRG) and its da Vinci system, isn’t using robots yet, according to Verily CEO Andrew Conrad. In a conversation with MassDevice.com last year, Conrad and J&J’s worldwide medical devices chairman Gary Pruden said Verb plans to develop a digital surgery platform to improve surgical outcomes using advanced robotics and informatics.
The company said that its platform includes robotics, visualization, advanced instrumentation, data analytics and connectivity.
“This is a tremendous achievement for Verb and our collaboration partners at Ethicon, and Verily,” CEO Scott Huennekens said in prepared remarks. “Verb is a company driven by taking action for surgeons and patients. Completing this prototype milestone was an achievement that we aimed for a year ago, and I’m excited to say we achieved it and are on track with our development schedule to deliver Surgery 4.0 with our platform.”
“The team has made important progress since Verb was formed in August 2015. The digitally-enabled surgery platform is a great example of how healthcare can be transformed through innovation,” Pruden added.
“It is extremely exciting to see the hard work Verily has been doing in optics, electronics, software, and more to take the next big step toward saving lives,” Sergey Brin, co-founder of Alphabet, Inc., said. “Thanks to all of our partners and collaborators at Johnson & Johnson, Verb, and others.”
“Verb is in a very unique position to leverage technology in ways never imagined before and we’ve just taken one major step forward to creating the future of surgery,” Huennekens said.
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