Dive Brief:
- Moon Surgical has added 5G and Wi-Fi connectivity to all its deployed Maestro robotic surgery systems, the company said Wednesday.
- Connecting the devices to the internet positions Moon to use centralized cloud-based artificial intelligence. The company added connectivity capabilities alongside cloud-based analytics.
- Moon said Maestro, which is cleared for use in Europe and the U.S., has been used to treat over 2,300 patients. The cases span a range of surgical specialties and clinical indications.
Dive Insight:
Targeting a soft-tissue market led by Intuitive Surgical, Moon has invested in digital capabilities to try to differentiate its robots from the competition. AI hardware leader Nvidia co-led Moon’s $55.4 million financing round in 2023. Moon received Food and Drug Administration clearance this year for ScoPilot, an AI-powered feature that is enabled by Nvidia’s Holoscan real-time sensing platform.
The addition of 5G and Wi-Fi connectivity allows Moon to go beyond its existing on-device computing. Maestro can now access centralized cloud AI powered by Nvidia graphics processing units.
Moon has also launched a cloud-based analytics platform, Maestro Insights. The company said the platform “provides surgical teams and administrators with on-demand access to procedural metrics, automated administrative tasks and facility-level coordination tools.” Moon sees the platform as a digital hub for connected devices.
“With real-time connectivity and Maestro Insights, we're laying the foundation for the next wave of AI-powered tools, which not only provide greater efficiency and predictability during surgery, but also streamlining and automating some of the burdensome steps needed before and after surgery, for both the surgeons and their staffs,” Jeffery Alvarez, chief strategy officer at Moon, said in a statement.
Moon listed setup automation, staff alerting and coordination, dynamic scheduling, and automating case reporting and billing as examples of potential use cases. The company sees its work to boost efficiency and predictability as particularly important to the ambulatory surgery centers and other high-throughput sites that it is targeting.
Distalmotion, another soft-tissue robotics company, has also identified ASCs as sites where it can carve out a niche in a broader sector led by Intuitive.
