Speaking on the new season’s first DeviceTalks Tuesdays webinar, advisor Steve Bell — who has more than 25 years of experience in the surgical robotics industry — and The Mullings Group Chair and CEO Joe Mullings joined host Tom Salemi to discuss what’s next for the surgical robotics market, which continues to heat up.
Intuitive Surgical, the longtime leader in the space, continues to maintain its pole position in surgical robotics. The company has launched the da Vinci 5, its latest-generation surgical robot, and Bell called the rollout an impressive “textbook launch.”
“What I loved about it was they underpromised and then by the numbers they massively over-delivered,” Bell said. “It’s set another new standard. It’s raised the game yet again.”
Mullings added that approval for da Vinci 5 was a given and Intuitive continues to set the standard, saying they’re “just getting started.”
“Nobody’s worked closer to the FDA than the Intuitive organization, and it has done a really good job of establishing a baseline and what’s best in class,” Mullings said. “You’re going to see the unleashing of Intuitive as a competitor now.”
Intuitive, as a competitor, has the upper hand against potential competition from all over, with several other names — big and small — trying to establish a foothold in surgical robotics. Medtronic is looking to get urological indications for its Hugo robot, and Johnson & Johnson MedTech recently secured FDA investigational device exemption (IDE) for its Ottava robot.
“If I’m Medtronic or J&J, I wish I could reset the clock 15 years and pick a new format to compete in,” Mullings said. “I think, now, we’re going to see true competition.”
Beyond those big names, Bell and Mullings expect more on the horizon this year from competitors with lower-profile systems. That includes CMR Surgical, Distalmotion, and Moon Surgical, which all secured their own FDA approvals within the past year.
Elsewhere, companies like SS Innovations, Karl Storz (with the Asensus Surgical robotic platforms), and more are gaining ground, too.
“There are a lot of good systems out there right now, candidly, but I tend to focus on four in particular for my own personal choice,” he said. “I focus on Distalmotion, I focus on Asensus, I focus on SSI out of India, and I focus on Moon Surgical because they all represent an area that is not going directly head-to-head to compete against Intuitive and its soft tissue surgical robotics.”
Bell echoes Mullings’ sentiment in that some of the most promising technologies are providing a surgical robotic option that won’t necessarily clash in the market with the decades-long leader.
“The other companies are having some success again by trying to find areas where they have a unique proposition,” Bell explained. “And I think that all the companies that do that are going to have a little bit more success by doing that and not having to spend the massive marketing dollars to compete with Intuitive head-on.”
For the year ahead, Bell and Mullings expect more clearances, more telesurgery, and, vitally, more AI with Nvidia in particular making surgical robotic plays.
“I think 2024 was a great year,” Bell said. “I think 2025 is a very exciting year.”
Said Mullings: “2025 — and we talked about this almost a year ago — is going to be the golden year of medtech for so many reasons.”
