How to realize the surgical robot from R&D to landing

    In recent years, the global medical robot market size has been growing rapidly. It is expected that the medical robotics market size will reach $20.7 billion in 2021, of which surgical robots account for 60% of the entire medical robotics market size, with a CAGR of 30% from 2014 to 2021.

    Currently, surgical robots can be broadly divided into two categories: robots for hard tissue surgery and robots for soft tissue surgery. Due to different application scenarios, the basic program design of these two types of surgical robots is completely different. For soft tissue surgical robots, whether it is a single-hole robot or a multi-hole robot, the principle is to use equipment to replace the human eyes, hands, in vivo operation; for hard tissue surgical robots, the core is to help the doctor to locate, and gradually increase the grinding function.

    In the direction of soft tissue surgical robot, da Vinci surgical robot has achieved great success. In the direction of hard tissue surgical robots, Beijing Tianzhihang Medical Technology Co., Ltd. is a representative company, and its core product Tiangui orthopedic surgical robot is the world's first universal orthopedic surgical robot.

     Advantages of China's surgical robot research and development

    The rapid growth of the surgical robot market is not only related to technological advances, but also fueled by patient demand.

With the increasing demand for minimally invasive surgery, if the hospital does not carry out the corresponding minimally invasive surgery, or the doctor does not have the ability to minimally invasive surgery, the patient will choose to go to other hospitals, this phenomenon pushes the hospitals to introduce surgical robotic equipment, doctors to actively learn to operate surgical robots in the new technology in order to achieve a better therapeutic effect.

      A surgeon's golden hour is when his or her surgical skills, experience and stamina are at their career best. One of the roles of surgical robots is to extend a surgeon's golden hour. A surgeon's golden hour is actually quite short. At the beginning of the practice, doctors need a few years of exercise to familiarize themselves with the mastery of surgical skills, and as they grow older, their physical strength begins to run out, coupled with a long period of surgery triggered by the doctor's hands shaking, swollen feet, and so on, will shorten the doctor's golden time. The emergence of surgical robots can solve the problem of doctors' physical strength, prolonging the doctor's golden time.

      At present, China's surgical robot research and development has two particularly obvious advantages: First, the doctors in China's large hospitals have a lot of experience, and any ideas of the researchers can be quickly understood and absorbed by the doctors, which makes it easy for the researchers to carry out animal tests or clinical trials under the provisions of the ethical requirements; Secondly, most of the doctors have a strong motivation in the scientific research of the combination of medical and industrial research, such as the need for some doctors to publish academic papers, and the need for some other doctors to be exposed to new ideas. There are also doctors who want to be exposed to new cutting-edge technologies, and so on.

     Either of these factors is a good thing for MedTech entrepreneurs. Medical technology entrepreneurship requires the cooperation of industry, academia, research and medicine, especially the support of medical institutions and the participation of doctors, which will play a decisive role in the development of the product and the subsequent landing.

      Failure to effectively realize the reasons for industrial landing

       The development of surgical robots in China has its own advantages and obvious gaps. Surgical robots have been developed in different fields, but only a few of them can really make products and implement industrialization. The reasons for this are mainly the following.

     First, the current group of national projects are relatively scattered, involving hospitals, universities, research institutes, etc., they are innovative from their own point of view and needs, but when it comes to specific productization and commercialization, there is not a complete set of landing mode, and there is no mature enterprise is willing to accept.

     Second, the surgical robot from the project research and development to industrial landing time cycle is long, the investment is large, generally need more than 10 years, in the process need at least 100 million U.S. dollars or more of financial support, and it is difficult to say whether it can get a return.

     Third, whether the surgical robot can realize the industrial landing, and the overall strength of the department of cooperation also has a certain relationship. At present, China's surgical robots are the first results of orthopedics, neurosurgery, cardiothoracic surgery. These departments are a few departments with high hospital revenue. Regarding rehabilitation robots, there are many mature products on the market, but the development of China's rehabilitation industry is slow, the department's income is not high, the large-scale application of rehabilitation robots will take time.

    Conversion of ideas to promote the transformation of scientific and technological achievements

     Let the surgical robot landing, in addition to the need for time and money investment, practitioners also need to convert thinking, keep up with the times.

      First, clinical value ≠ commercial value. Many technologies and applications can solve clinical needs, but it does not necessarily have commercial value. For example, in pelvic surgery, there is a clinical need and the technology can be realized, but the market is very small and the market size is not large enough to support the R&D cost and operation cost, so it is difficult to market such R&D.

     Secondly, innovation ≠ entrepreneurship. Many universities mix innovation and entrepreneurship together. Technology-based entrepreneurship includes multiple dimensions of technological innovation, industrial transformation, and commercial operation. And innovation is mostly research in labs and hospitals, and more often than not, it is only research and has nothing to do with commercialization. Therefore, innovation is innovation and entrepreneurship is entrepreneurship, not to be confused.

     Third, project ≠ company. Similarly, project and company are not the same, the project may be the researchers apply to the state, province, city, school research, the state to give funds, the researchers give research results. But as a company, research is only part of the work, how to manage the team, how to operate the company, how to realize profit, and be responsible for employees and investors are all factors that the company needs to consider.