Made-in-SND surgery robots world's first

A surgical robot independently developed by a high-end medical company in Suzhou New District was recently received approval from the National Medical Products Administration to hit the market.

It was the world's first minimally-invasive spinal surgical robot to use intuitive image positioning technology and the only robot capable of performing surgeries under local anesthesia.

The project was led by Academician Qiu Guixing from the Chinese Academy of Engineering and carried out by Suzhou Zoezen Robot Co, a high-tech company established in SND in November 2016 and dedicated to research on integrated methods of intelligent surgical technology, equipment and clinic manifestation.

The robot can help alleviate the shortage of skilled orthopedic clinicians as cultivating one qualified doctor usually takes years of learning and practice. In the spinal surgery field in particular, one minor mistake can have disastrous consequences.

For example, when carrying out a pedicle screw implantation surgery, the screw placement channel must always be inside the pedicle, while muscle fatigue is inevitable, even for experienced surgeons, during long surgeries.

Medical robots developed by Zoezen can help shorten surgery time, enhance the safety and accuracy of surgeries, and replace previous robots that are more expensive and require patients to take general anesthesia.

The robot has been introduced at many top domestic hospitals, including Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Chinese PLA General Hospital, Tianjin hospital, and the First Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University.