Hamlyn Centre for Robotic Surgery’s Post

Just back from leave - time to regroup and reflect on what we saw at the Hamlyn Centre for Robotic Surgery and what AI is doing for surgery.... The right application for AI is to supplement, not supplant the clinician. As surgery becomes less invasive, surgery becomes more available and decentralised from the Operating Theatre. AI is developing into a position to support the cognitive load on the clinician and spot things that would otherwise be missed. Dr Noriko Suzuki (Suzuki Noriko) illustrated beautifully where we're headed - AI spotting potentially cancerous lesions in NBI imaging feeds that could have gone unseen. Its not the future - its here today. But its no panacea yet - false positives are high, processing on-prem for real-time requires massive GPUs and Dr Suzuki's complaints as a leading LAP surgeon are still fundamental - procedures are fatiguing physically and demand high-skill. We saw lots on AI in imaging - highly promising, but it has a way to go and in need of excellent integration with robotic systems to become transformative. A view of the future for integration here was demonstration of autonomous navigation and cathertisation of the right heart from digital twins. As these technologies mature and integrate, we'll see a new class of surgery emerge. We're seeing the birth of the surgical autopilot. Beyond taking control, AI has a role to play in man/machine interfacing too and in an interesting exchange we discussed how that might look. AI drawing together multiple cues from the surgeon to guide the procedure....not that Da Vinci and Medtronic's Hugo weren't a delight to play with! I'm interested in the move away from fluoroscopy and reliance on CT and the beginnings of this were out in force: low-cost Ultra-NeRF (great talk from Howie Choset - I love Ultrasound and it has a lot still to give) sparked thoughts of intraoperative image augmentation and mixed-mode imaging driven by AI. Affordable, accessible, miniature hardware with zero radiation dosing is around the corner. We saw the sharp end of that from Intuitive's Sylvain Gioux. To see new technologies commercialised so deftly is an inspiration to us all in the field. There's too much to mention, but it was great for the Surgical Team at PA Consulting to be amongst our people. Thanks to Ferdinando Rodriguez y Baena and the vital work his team do in bringing this event together. We're proud to have all of the skills in-house to bring cutting edge technology to the market where it can deliver for patients and we're fortunate to be part of this community.