Titan Medical Inc (TMDIF)

[investinthefuture]

Just took a look at ISRG's new robot. It appears to be the next step for the daVinci system evolutionarily, but nothing revolutionary.

The key changes from the Si system are as follows:

- The arms of the robot are all rooted from a position above the patient instead of a position to the side of the patient. So basically, they moved the arms to a spot better suited at reaching all four surgical quadrants instead of having to move the robot for multi quadrant surgery. I'm not sure how many surgeons will be doing multi quadrant surgery with the daVinci, but the capability is now there.

- You can now put the endoscope (camera) on any of the arms. They also mention that the endoscope uses a new "digital architecture" with a better image, which is a little confusing because the Si already produced an all-digital HD image anyway

- Smaller arms….I agree that the arms on the Si are unwieldy, so the smaller arms should be nice from a space point of view in the OR

- Longer instrument shafts….this kind of goes hand-in-hand with the new positioning of the arms from a point zenith of the patient….you need longer instruments to make sure you can reach the anatomy that you're after.


Summary: The daVinci Xi system is a more aesthetically pleasing version of the daVinci Si with root of the articulating arms moved from a side-dock to a top-dock position, which will allow for multi-quadrant surgery (useful for abdominal, but not so much for urology and gyn, which is where 75% of the MIS cases are)