How Surge-On Medical Defines the Future of Surgery
Defining the future of robotic surgery training and MIS instruments: Surge-on Medical started shaping their own VR trainer to deliver more value to the users.
More products, more reasons to invest
We’re in the final hours of our equity crowdfunding campaign. In last week’s article we gave an overview about what Surge-on Medical achieved so far. Now, we’ll give you a peak in our R&D department, showing that Surge-on Medical’s multi-patented platform technology opens a full range of innovative products. This contains 2 important messages for potential investors:
- Product diversification increase the total addressable market-size (which relates to higher expected revenues).
- And it will reduce risks by allocating the responsibility for success to a whole portfolio of products.
Robotic surgery training focused on the end-user
Did you ever dream of learning robotics surgery from behind your desk? This will be possible soon!
Surge-on Medical and the “Sustainable Surgery” research line of the Delft University of Technology are working on a new type of a desk trainer for laparoscopic robot surgery. This trainer allows students and residents to control different types of instruments and robot platforms and has tactile contact feedback that indicates when task materials that should be avoided are touched.
At the moment, only a few trainers are commercially available. These systems are:
- expensive,
- not easy to transport
- or contain futuristic controls that are very different from the real robotic systems that are used in surgery today.
Aware of these challenges, Surge-on Medical started shaping their own VR trainer to deliver more value to the users. The resulting idea, the PoLaRS-VR system, is designed to be affordable and portable, can be used to mimic different types of instruments from different surgical robot platforms, and will have validated training tasks that can be trained with tactile feedback.
Validation is on its way
The system’s software is currently under development and is getting ready for validation with hospitals in the Netherlands and Germany. The launch of the study conducted with students and experts is planned for the end of July 2020, and will include multiple pick-and-place tasks with a focus on safe tissue handling and prevention of collisions during complex tissue and tool manipulations.
PoLaRS-VR features the steerable laparoscopic graspers developed by Surge-on Medical, in relation to the 7 Degrees Of Freedom (DOF) robotic controls. More advanced instruments will be added in the future. Follow our news and stay updated on the developments with PoLaRS-VR!
“What we now see is that the options for students to train their robotic surgical skills are limited. Only a few training centres provide robotic training and even fewer have a robotic system in house that can be used for training. Therefore, residents and surgeons typically must do a course abroad,” mentions Surge-on Medical’s CTO Tim Horeman. “As robotic surgery will become the standard in the near future, it is better for medical students to develop and maintain their technical skills now. With the PoLaRS-VR we aim to provide a practical training system that allow more future surgeons to train in advanced robotic surgery whenever needed.”
Platform technology: many more instruments expected
In addition to robot training, Surge-on Medical’s R&D efforts especially continue towards the development of minimally invasive surgical (MIS) instruments. All these instruments are based on our multi-patented platform technology, which adds steerability, detachability and cleanability to this new line of innovative surgical instrumentation.
In the past few months, future products were carefully selected on a combination of market size, technical feasibility and added value for the surgeon and patient in the selected type of surgery.
Where the Steerable Grasper for laparoscopic surgery has been in the late prototype phase since 2019, in 2020 and 2021 we’ll also work on the product roadmap for arthroscopic minimally invasive instruments:
The Surge-on Medical team has reached the first milestones of reducing the instruments’ diameter from 5 to just 3 mm, which is a prerequisite for ENT surgery and other types of surgery.
The image below shows the recently completed 3D model of an instrument with a lengthened shaft, which is the first milestone in the development of spine surgery instruments.
Become part of the future of surgical instruments and robotic surgery training
Visit the funding page for more information, and take your final chance to invest from just 1,000 euros in this ending-soon campaign. This funding round ends next Sunday, June 7 at 11:59 pm, so now is the time to join!