Luna Innovations Signs Multi-Year Development and Supply Agreement with Intuitive Surgical: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

Luna Innovations Signs Multi-Year Development and Supply Agreement with Intuitive Surgical
Thursday June 14, 9:21 am ET
Luna's Sensing Technology to be Integrated into Intuitive's Surgical Products

ROANOKE, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Luna Innovations Incorporated (NASDAQ:LUNA - News) announced today that it has entered into an IP licensing, development, and supply agreement with Intuitive Surgical, Inc. (NASDAQ: ISRG - News), the global technology leader in robotic-assisted minimally invasive surgery (MIS). Under the terms of the multi-year agreement, Luna will develop and supply its fiber optic-based shape sensing and position tracking system for integration into Intuitive Surgical's products, which includes the da Vinci� Surgical System.

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Telemedicine: Proven results and promise for the future - With recent advances in telecommunications and surgical robotics, telemedicine is poised to increase the efficiency of urologic practices and bring access to specialists and surgeons to even the most rural communities. - Modern Medicine

The future of telesurgery and telementoring. As telecommunications and robotic technology continue to advance, telesurgery is likely to take on a more prominent role in urologic practice. Citing an emerging body of literature supporting the idea of a correlation between a surgeon's level of experience and clinical outcomes, many advocate the centralization of surgical care to centers of excellence. Telesurgery has the potential to play a significant role in this process, allowing for such centralization while obviating the need for patients to travel great distances to obtain such levels of care.

CONCLUSION

Much like the introduction of the telephone and email to the practice of medicine, the introduction of more sophisticated technology has been met with skepticism and concerns over quality of care. However, just as the telephone has become pivotal in the rapid and effective transmission of medical information, advanced telemedicine is likely to become part of routine urologic practice.

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UroToday - Remote Telepresence Surgery: The Canadian Experience

This important report from Canada presents 22 telerobotic general surgery laparoscopy cases performed by two surgeons over a distance of 400 kilometers; from a teaching hospital in Hamilton, Ontario to a community hospital in rural Northern Ontario.

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Johns Hopkins Magazine

Robotics, along with stem-cell research, will drive much of the innovation in medicine in the coming decades. Mohsen Mahvash Mohammady, an assistant research professor at the Engineering Research Center for Computer-Integrated Surgical Systems and Technology (ERC CISST) at Johns Hopkins, and a fixture in the haptics lab, says that collaboration is the key to the lab's success. "Without a doctor's input, I would be able to develop a nicely controlled robot, but I wouldn't be able to incorporate what surgeons need," says Mohammady, who is working on developing haptic scissors, as well as finding the best ways to retrofit the daVinci with the most useful types of force feedback.

Update from John Hopkins engineering school. Haptics for robotic surgery is being investigated in the form of tactile feedback. I think the need for haptics for experienced robotic surgeries is less than most people would think, but it can help. I think for beginners it will help a great deal. Other forms of feedback were discussed as well, the most promising one being visual feedback in the form of color changes as tension increased.

It is likely a few years away, but on the horizon.

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MTB Europe - Robotic surgery guided by 3-D ultrasound scanner: "Surgery
Robotic surgery guided by 3-D ultrasound scanner
7 November 2006
Durham, N.C. USA. Duke University engineers have shown that a three-dimensional ultrasound scanner they developed can successfully guide a surgical robot."

I discussed how the daVinci robotic system is a master-slave system several months ago.

Researches at Duke have used the most advanced ultrasound to help guide biopsies. I can see this technology one day helping me perform robotic partial nephrectomies, when I am trying to remove part of a kidney with a small margin of healthy tissue around it. It can also help guide biopsies. I am not sure it will help that much with prostates, as the accuracy is within 1.5 mm and my nearest surgical margin is often closer than that.

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UNL News Release: High-resolution touch sensor could be boon to cancer surgeons, others

Source: Office of University Communications
University of Nebraska-Lincoln

I think this has the potential to be a great technology. I think the part about helping surgeons perform better cancer surgeries is a little exaggerated. When performing surgery, I can not reliably distinguish cancer from healthy tissue by feel alone. I could see this technology being used to help with haptics, a current robotic limitation.

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NU robots designed to train doctors to operate in outer space
Source: Lincoln Journal Star

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From Reuters
An article about Dr. Atala and his pioneering work in making new bladders out of cells grown from the patient.

Dr. Atala performed this for children and his main focus is in making organs out of a patient's own cells that could be used transplantation.

I can also envision the day when we have bladders available for replacements in patients with bladder cancer, avoiding the need for bowel segments. This would be an excellent thing to have for patients needing cystectomies for bladder cancer, where the entire operation could be performed with robotics.

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I was giving a talk today at New Jersey City University and was asked a good question.

Do I think that robotic surgery will change so the robot does the surgery?

Currently the da Vinci Surgical system is a master-slave system, where the surgeon is the master and the console is the slave. The da Vinci system translates a surgeons movements, but does not act independently in any way, meaning that it is not a true "robot". I have described the robotic system previously.

I was asked if I thought the day would come when there would be a true robotic system that can be programmed to perform surgery more accurately?

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