Author Archives: Jose Granell

Johnson & Johnson has reached a major milestone: the U.S. FDA has granted market authorization for the OTTAVA™ Robotic Surgery System, clearing the company’s entry into the competitive soft-tissue robotic surgery market. The initial authorization covers several upper abdominal general surgical procedures, with additional indications expected to follow. What makes OTTAVA particularly interesting is itsContinue reading “FDA Market Authorization for OTTAVA™ Robotic Surgical System”

Markets are fascinating because they are ultimately mechanisms for allocating scarce resources. The stock market allocates capital. Investors continuously decide which companies deserve funding based on their expectations of future value creation. In the long run, markets tend to reward companies capable of generating sustainable profits and penalize those that cannot. The commercial market worksContinue reading “How many soft-tissue robotic surgery platforms can the market realistically absorb?”

Sometimes, the most innovative ideas are not enough. I have just added Vicarious Surgical to the robotic platforms section of this website. From an engineering perspective, it was one of the most original systems ever conceived. Instead of refining the traditional robotic architecture, Vicarious proposed something radically different: two fully articulated robotic arms that unfoldContinue reading “Is this the end for Vicarious Surgical?”

One of the things I love most about surgical robotics is that it never stops surprising me. Just yesterday I discovered that Bitrack, the robotic surgical platform developed by the Spanish company Rob Surgical, has already obtained a CE mark. That means this is far more than a concept or an early prototype, it isContinue reading “Bitrack by Rob Surgical”

La posición en la que dormimos influye en la apnea obstructiva del sueño (AOS). En la inmensa mayoría de los pacientes las apneas aparecen cuando duermen en decúbito supino (boca arriba). La explicación es sencilla: en esta posición la gravedad favorece el desplazamiento de la lengua y de los tejidos blandos de la faringe haciaContinue reading “De la pelota de tenis a los dispositivos inteligentes: la evolución de la terapia posicional”

The Bilateral Axillo-Breast Approach (BABA) has become one of the most established remote-access techniques for robotic thyroid and parathyroid surgery. First introduced in 2007 as an evolution of the earlier ABBA technique, BABA combines excellent cosmetic results with a surgical view that closely reproduces conventional open thyroidectomy, making it one of the most intuitive roboticContinue reading “Bilateral Axillo-Breast Approach (BABA). A comprehensive guide by Hyeong Won Yu”

The arrival of several new soft tissue robotic systems has transformed the market into one where different engineering philosophies compete to solve the same surgical problems. Interestingly, the differences between these systems are no longer limited to marketing or incremental improvements. Instead, manufacturers are making fundamentally different choices about how a surgical robot should beContinue reading “Soft-tissue robotic surgery: understanding the different engineering philosophies”

Japan’s surgical robot arrives in Europe. Another important milestone in the rapidly evolving robotic surgery landscape. Medicaroid Europe GmbH announced yesterday that the hinotori™ Surgical Robot System has received CE mark approval, opening the door to its clinical commercialization across Europe. The approval follows the company’s MDR submission in 2025 and represents the first EuropeanContinue reading “hinotori gets CE mark”

En abril de 2015, la Agencia Española de Medicamentos y Productos Sanitarios (AEMPS) publicó una nota informativa para aclarar una confusión que empezaba a hacerse frecuente: la diferencia entre un audífono y un amplificador de sonido. La advertencia respondía a la proliferación de dispositivos electrónicos que se comercializaban como “audífonos” cuando, en realidad, no loContinue reading “¿Qué diferencias hay entre un audífono y un auricular?”

I just had a Zoom talk with Ethan Wilke, Jain Aabhas and Alejandro Chara, a research team from Vanderbilt university (https://www.medicalengineeringlab.com/), Nashville, Tennessee. They are working on a project in the frame of NIH sponsored research. Their latest work focuses on what is known as needlescopic robots. Needlescopic surgery is generally defined as the useContinue reading “Thinking small: needlescopic robots”