Outpatient Surgery Magazine

Special Outpatient Surgery Edition - Megatrends - January 2018

Outpatient Surgery Magazine, providing current information on Surgical Services, Surgical Facility Administration, Outpatient Surgery News and Trends, OR Excellence and more.

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for much longer. Several compact platforms in development offer the benefits of robotic-assisted surgery at a fraction of the da Vinci's million-dollar price tag. Robotic arms are also making joint replacement more precise and spine surgery safer. Assuming that only health systems with bottomless budgets have the means to purchase robots will have you playing catch-up to facili- ties with the foresight to realize that robotic assistance is evolving from supposed marketing gimmick to outpatient surgery mainstay. End of a monopoly In October 2017, TransEnterix received FDA approval for the Senhance Surgical Robot System, which was designed as a direct competitor of the da Vinci. The Senhance has one less arm than the da Vinci system and is comprised of 3 separate units that nurses need to wheel up to the bedside. But as far as operation — during which the surgeon sits away from the patient in a console where he controls the surgical instrumentation using joysticks and foot pedals — the 2 robots are virtually the same. Cost is where the similarities end. TransEnterix wants to enter the market at a lower price point than the da Vinci, says Chris Schabowsky, PhD, the program manager in applied solutions at ECRI Institute, an independent healthcare research firm in Plymouth Meeting, Pa. He says the company plans to offer a less expensive robot by outfitting the platform with detachable instrument arms that can be sterilized hundreds of times. (Intuitive Medical, maker of the da Vinci, mandates its robots' arms can be used only 10 times before being switched out for new ones.) By not capping the number of uses for their instruments, TransEnterix lowers the platform's per-proce- dure cost. "You can sterilize the instruments hundreds of times as if they are traditional laparoscopic tools," says Dr. Schabowsky. 3 8 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 8

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