Dr. Lluís Peri is a Urologist at the Hospital Clínic de Barcelona and Head of the Reconstructive Urology Area. Together with Dr. Mireia Musquera, he has led the first Rob Surgical robot surgeries on patients at the Hospital Clínic in Barcelona. Nephrectomies performed with the Bitrack surgical robot have been carried out satisfactorily and no adverse events have been reported. After the success of the interventions, we discussed with Dr. Peri his vision of minimally invasive surgery and the advances in robotics in his specialty area.
How has surgery changed in recent years? In the last two decades surgery has evolved towards a new paradigm shift. There is no longer the idea of the great surgeon and the great incision, the best surgeon is the one who can perform a less invasive surgery, which implies a smaller cut. For this, it is necessary to have more technology: laparoscopy, robotic surgery, minimally invasive surgery in general.
What is minimally invasive surgery? Minimally invasive surgery is understood as operating on someone through the smallest possible incision to achieve the least amount of aggression in the abdomen. It can be performed through incisional laparoscopy or through natural orifices.
What advances does the Bitrack surgical robot facilitate in your specialty area? Bitrack provides us with a new surgical robot that allows us to perform surgeries with great ease using instruments that we already have: laparoscopy cameras, generic trocars… we do not need instruments specially designed for the robot. It is an extremely easy robot to assemble and to assemble and disassemble.
Does working with Bitrack make your job as a surgeon easier? Yes, it allows performing some maneuvers that by laparoscopy are much more complex.
How was your experience performing the first operations of the Bitrack robot with live humans? It has been an enormous satisfaction to be able to perform the first surgeries and that they have been completed without any complications. We have shown that it is a very safe surgical robot.
What advantage does 3D vision bring during surgery? With 3D surgery we operate by laparoscopy with the same conditions that we would operate in open surgery. That is, with a sense of depth. This facilitates the precision of the movements and injuries or imprecise maneuvers related to the lack of depth sensation are avoided.
Thank you very much for your time, Dr. Peri, and congratulations on the success of the first interventions on patients.
The Bitrack surgical robot facilitates the work of surgeons. The functionality of operating in a hybrid system allows the professional to make the most of their medical skills, with extreme precision of intervention.
The nephrectomies performed with the surgical robot by the team from the Hospital Clínic’s Urology Service have gone well and no adverse events have been reported.
Rob Surgical, a spin-off created 12 years ago in Barcelona by the Universitat Politècnica de Barcelona (UPC) and the Institut de Bioenginyeria de Catalunya (IBEC), is the 1st Spanish company to obtain the European certification.
Bitrack, the robot created by the company, improves the efficiency of current surgical robots, making precision surgery universal and bringing its benefits to all hospitals, surgeons and patients around the world.
Barcelona, Thursday 15 June 2023. The Hospital Clínic Barcelona has successfully performed the first surgeries with Bitrack, the surgical robot created by the Catalan company, Rob Surgical. The first surgeries were carried out by Dr. Lluís Peri, a specialist from the hospital’s Urology Service, which is headed by Dr. Antonio Alcaraz. These first surgeries are part of the collaboration agreement between the Hospital Clínic and Rob Surgical to make progress in precision surgery in the field of Urology.
The surgeries performed by the new Bitrack robot were three radical nephrectomies, operations that consist of the removal of the kidney due to a malfunction or a pre-existing condition. All three surgeries were performed satisfactorily, and, after a 30-day follow-up, no adverse events were observed as a result of the use of the Bitrack system. Dr. Mireia Musquera from the Hospital Clínic Urology Service also participated in these surgeries.
This series of operations is the first step in the clinical validation of the robot’s safety and efficacy for kidney surgery after numerous tests on animal models, which were carried out in collaboration with Specipig (Contract Research Organization focused on the pig model), and on corpse models carried out by CMCiB (Comparative Medicine and Bioimage Centre) at the Germans Trias i Pujol research centre (IGTP). Surgeons from the Mayo Clinic (USA), the Hospital Clínic University Hospital, the Vall d’Hebron University Hospital and the Germans Trias i Pujol University Hospital participated in the preclinical phase.
In April 2023, the company received authorization from the Spanish Agency of Medicines and Medical Devices (AEMPS) and the Ethics Committee of the Hospital Clínic de Barcelona for the clinical trials. The ultimate goal of this patient trial is to certify the robot and start marketing it in 2024. Rob Surgical is the 8th company in the world and the 1st in Spain to obtain authorization to carry out clinical trials in patients with urological diseases.
Rob Surgical improves on current robotics and offers an open, flexible and versatile platform consisting of a column of four arms, which allow the movements of the surgical instruments to be controlled with sub-millimetre precision. The system improves the efficiency of current surgical robotics, allowing for the universalization of precision surgery. Bitrack, the only open-platform surgical robot, is the result of over 10 years of research.
The value proposition is based on three pillars: high precision and safety that benefits the patient, superior usability for the surgeon and a significant reduction in the total cost per surgery that benefits hospitals, as it does not require a dedicated operating theatre, it needs fewer staff, no prior training is required, and it allows for hybrid surgeries.
One of this robot’s differentiating factors is the possibility of performing hybrid surgeries, which allow the surgeon to combine manual manoeuvres (MIS) and robotic methods (MIRS) in the same procedure, thereby taking advantage of laparoscopic surgery and robotic surgery in the same surgical procedure. All this thanks to the use of the same instruments and flexible robotics that allow the robot to intervene only in the most delicate parts.
Moreover, Rob Surgical offers the possibility of automatic camera guidance even when working with manual instruments. Hybrid surgery benefits both the patient and the surgical professional by combining the precision and safety of the robotic system with the medical team’s experience, as it reduces surgery time, thus increasing the turnover of the operating theatre. The possibility of using generic instruments and trocars and combing them with flexible robotics allows the robot to intervene only when needed and reduces the time and cost of each operation.
The clinical study was conducted in accordance with internationally recognized clinical trial protocols established by the Good Clinical Practice (GCP).
Dr. Lluís Peri, from the Hospital Clínic Barcelona Urology Service and the first surgeon to perform a laparoscopic procedure in a clinical setting using Bitrack, says that, “is it good news to have a new surgical robot made in Catalonia. The robot works well, it is easy to use and it integrates very easily into surgical processes. It allows us to have a new quality tool to perform minimally invasive urological surgeries”.
“This new milestone brings the medical robotics technology company closer to its founding purpose: to universalize precision surgery and bring its benefits to all hospitals, surgeons and patients around the world. Moreover, this success is the prelude to the market launch”, points out Jaume Amat, CEO of Rob Surgical.
After the completion of the first series in humans, Rob Surgical will continue working with the Hospital Clínic Barcelona Urology Service on the optimization of the system and the clinical introduction of the Bitrack surgical robot to bring the benefits of precision surgery to all patients in this field. Likewise, Rob Surgical will continue to work in the fields of General Surgery and Gynaecology.
Rob Surgical’s mission is to universalize high-precision surgery and bring its benefits to every hospital, surgeon and patient around the world. For this, we have designed and developed Bitrack, an open-platform robotic system.
What does it mean for the robotic platform to be open?
The open robotic platform makes the surgical robot compatible with an extensive list of endoscopy instruments and equipment. It is combined with conventional instruments, trocars and cameras with a quick and easy docking.
“We have achieved efficiency by designing an open robotic platform that allows a better integrate the robot with the other devices and equipment in a conventional operating room,” says Josep Amat, Chief Scientific Officer at Rob Surgical.
The open-platform, in addition to allowing robotic and traditional handheld instruments to work complementarily facilitating hybrid surgery, synchronizes with the generic operating room vision system, 3D display, and ESU (Electrosurgical Unit).
In addition, the open-platform collects data in real-time, providing constant advances for the entire scientific community.
All this makes Bitrack the most versatile surgical robot on the market.
Rob Surgical has been innovating in the field of minimally invasive surgery for 12 years. Universalizing its use and extending its benefits is our founding purpose.
