The Next 10 Years: Challenges, Innovation and Diffusion of Medical Robotics

The annual Hamlyn Symposium on Medical Robotics came to a close during UK Robotics Week 2017.

Over 350 Surgeons, clinicians, engineers, business leaders and academics recently came together at the Royal Geographical Society for the annual Hamlyn Symposium.  Celebrating its 10th year and coinciding with the 2nd annual UK Robotics Week, the Symposium is hosted by the Hamlyn Centre for Robotic Surgery and offers an opportunity to test, watch demos and hear talks about the latest innovations in medical and surgical robotics.

Medical robotics have come a long way over the past 10 years and because there is less pain and recovery time for the patient and the surgical robotic instruments are able to be much more precise and minimally invasive, there is a win-win for both the patient and surgeon.

Marking the Symposium’s 10th birthday, the theme this year was to look at the future of medical robotics and the steps to take to allow us to further innovate, diffuse and overcome barriers throughout the next 10 years.

This year’s keynote lecture was presented by Dong-Soo Kwon from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and addressed ‘Efforts Towards the Minimum Invasive Surgery’.

Catherine Mohr

Invited speaker Catherine Mohr of
Intuitive Surgical.

Other highlighted speakers included Catherine Mohr of Intuitive Surgical who discussed ‘USA Surgical Robots as a Technology Platform’ and Andrew Turberfield from the University of Oxford who addressed ‘UK Programming Autonomous Molecular Machinery’.

The Karl Storz – Harold Hopkins Lecture was presented by Joseph J. Y. Sung from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), who talked about ‘China AI and Robotic Surgery: What is the Role of Future Medics?’.

Some segments of the event were live streamed on Periscope, which meant remote viewers were able to watch and interact with the Leaders Forum live as it happened.  Chaired by Director and Co-founder of the Hamlyn Centre Professor Guang-Zhong Yang and sponsored by Science Robotics Magazine, the Leaders Forum offered a platform for experts from across the globe to provide their views on the way forward for medical robotics in the years to come.  Experts included Professors Nikolay Vasilyev,  Russel Taylor, Bradley Nelson and Rick Satava.

 

By Jo Seed

Communications Manager,

Institute of Global Health Innovation

Imperial College London

 

For full report see

http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/centres/globalhealth/newssummary/news_12-7-2017-9-15-45