Paknad has over two decades of sales and marketing experience, specifically in soft tissue surgical robotics. She has held a number of senior global leadership roles, including VP of global robotics and digital health at Smith+Nephew and several roles at Intuitive Surgical. She was also a clinical advisory board member at Ronovo Surgical.
“With Michelle joining the commercial team we will be able to further accelerate CMR’s mission of bringing the benefits of robotic-assisted surgery, with Versius, to more hospitals around the world,” the company said in a LinkedIn post.
CMR Surgical’s Versius is a small-scale system with collaborative arms and bedside units for direct patient access. It also features freedom of port placement to best suit each patient’s needs.
CRM Surgical’s Versius system cases span more than 130 complex and benign procedure types. It performs colectomies, hernia repairs, hysterectomies, sacrocolpopexies, and lobectomies across seven surgical specialties.
CMR Surgical designed Versius to enable surgeons to perform more minimal-access surgery. The company says this offers patients “access to the highest quality of surgical care.” Versius’s minimally invasive approach assists surgeons in accessing the lungs, thymus, and esophagus.
With Versius, thoracic surgeons can work precisely and accurately in the chest cavity through small incisions in patients’ ribs. It features small, fully wristed instruments and 3D vision. The surgical robot’s small and modular design, according to the company, allows for setup that gives the surgeon optimal rib cage access.
Most recently, CMR Surgical began its first multicenter prospective clinical trial to assess Versius’s safety and efficacy in pediatric surgery. The trial will focus on children and infants under the age of 18 undergoing a range of urological procedures with Versius, including robotic-assisted pyeloplasty, uterteroureterostomy, nephrectomy and Mitrofanoff formation.
