Scott Huennekens: You're right, people still bunch us with robotics. And at conferences, I say "no, we're going to speak last" because we're different from that Surgery 3.0 world – we do things and view things differently. We are going to deliver on [this new generation of] Surgery 4.0, but it doesn't exist yet; we're creating a new category. We're beginning to talk about it and so is Medtronic. [Editors' note: Medtronic is co-developing products in this area with Israeli company Mazor Robotics to combine respective expertise in surgical navigation and implant systems and surgical planning].

Intuitive Surgical is a robotics company. It believes robotics is the solution, while we're saying, we are a surgery company and what are the best solutions to improve surgery? That could include robotics, machine learning, advanced visualization, data analytics, all those things are important. Some elements are more important for certain steps and cases, whether it's to improve outcomes or optimize costs. If you can do a step of a procedure with the same quality without a robot, don't use a robot, do it laparoscopically. But if something can be done with a higher quality and half the time, at the same cost, it's with the robot. Make the right decision – but it has to be always there and always on in order for you to do that.

With my prior [intravascular ultrasound] company, Volcano Corp., we integrated the system into every single lab and that's what we're going to do with Verb's technology. When it's always there and always on [rather than having to wheel it in each time], the economics change – the time to set up and use goes down dramatically. And because you're using the system, the procedure takes half the time and cost-per-case goes down.

Exec Chat: How Verb Surgical Will Deliver On Surgery 4.0

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