Cedars-Sinai this month launched its Center for Autonomous Robotic Surgery, “a new initiative bringing surgeons and engineers together to develop the next generation of surgical robots capable of performing certain surgical tasks autonomously while working alongside surgeons in the operating room.”
The center is co-directed by Andrew J. Hung, MD, a urologist and minimally invasive robotic surgery specialist in the Cedars-Sinai Department of Urology, and Michael C. Yip, PhD, who holds a joint faculty appointment at Cedars-Sinai in Urology and Computational Biomedicine. Cedars-Sinai stated that their surgeon-scientist partnership is “designed to bridge the gap between the operating room and the engineering lab.”
“For too long, the development of surgical robots has happened at a distance from the operating room, but the Center for Autonomous Robotic Surgery changes that,” said Dr. Hung. “As surgeons, we know what good surgery looks like. By embedding clinical expertise directly into the engineering process, we can build autonomous systems that surgeons will trust and patients will benefit from. This is where the future of robotic surgery will be built.”
Cedars-Sinai stated that the co-directors will develop “the next generation of surgical robots and surgeon-driven autonomous systems designed to augment a surgeon’s clinical judgment rather than replace it, making it possible to treat more complex diseases and reach more patients. The goal is to make surgery safer, more precise and more available.”
Stated Dr. Yip, “We now have the tools, from machine learning to advanced sensing, to build systems that genuinely understand the surgical environment and be able to autonomously support the surgical team in real time.”
Drs. Hung and Yip are currently recruiting clinicians, engineers and data scientists to join the center’s multidisciplinary team.
