When it comes to robotic surgery, the future is now

A Yale Robotic Surgery Symposium May 31 was the perfect time to celebrate Yale New Haven Health’s recent milestone of more than 30,000 robotic-assisted surgeries completed across the health system, yet the symposium also gave experts an opportunity to forecast a far greater role for robotics in the future.

Experts agreed that patients will continue to benefit from robotics in urology and gynecology, while they predict significant growth in general surgery, with many laparoscopic and open procedures soon to be performed robotically.

That seismic shift in coming years also likely means a future of enhanced safety, improved outcomes and shorter lengths of stay, and it could mean significant savings for health systems that embrace the technological advances.

“The combination of robotics and artificial intelligence will give us incredible opportunities that we haven’t seen before,” predicted Mani Menon, MD, chief of strategy and innovation in the Urology department at Mount Sinai Health System in New York. Dr. Menon, the event’s keynote speaker, is known for his pioneering work in cancer surgery that helped build the foundation for modern robotic surgery.

Dr. Menon, however, had one caveat. “Without a human being behind the controls, you can’t really put all the pieces together,” he said. “You need human beings trained to use these amazing technologies, and (Yale New Haven Health) has the human capital.”

“We’re just entering that exponential growth,” Dr. Duffy said. “Surgeons are adopting robotics because of improved patient outcomes, the ability to do procedures with higher quality, and faster recovery for patients. There’s also an ergonomic benefit for the surgeons. Surgeons get a lot of injuries – neck, spine and joint problems – and robotic ergonomics should be decreasing that.”

Another boon for robotics is data, Dr. Duffy said. “For every patient case, robotic equipment collects data that can be analyzed, individually or collectively, to find the best way of doing something,” he said. “This is where artificial intelligence comes in. That’s what’s going to be the biggest difference in the next five or 10 years – how we use data to make our practices and outcomes better.”

Christopher O’Connor, YNHHS CEO, and Nancy Brown, MD, Yale School of Medicine dean, both spoke at the symposium. O’Connor said that YNHHS and Yale School of Medicine are developing a joint strategic plan to become one of the nation’s premier academic health systems. O’Connor said, “We are committed to driving surgical innovation through robotics and using industry-leading technologies. The most advanced and versatile da Vinci (robotic) systems are deployed at every hospital, supporting our surgical expertise in a variety of specialties.”