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Forbes
9 hours ago
- Business
- Forbes
Where To Invest In Robotic Surgery
SS Innovations' surgical robots An automated Grey's Anatomy? Robots have proven their worth in manufacturing assembly lines, but they also have a big future in other places, in particular surgery. For one thing, robots promise technological exactitude—they don't shake like human hands. For another, the surgeon who directs an operation need not be physically present. Video and other tech systems allow the doctor to be hundreds of miles away, so patients needing urgent care doesn't have to wait for a specialist to travel to their bedside. Small wonder that robotic surgery's revenue is expected to double by 2029, reaching $23.7 billion, per research firm The question in this relatively new and burgeoning field is where to place your chips so you gain the best return long-term: with the top company, Intuitive Surgical, or a scrappy underdog, such as SS Innovations. There's a good case to be made for the underdog. Right now, robotics surgery leader Intuitive is riding on the success of its da Vinci Surgical System, which has been around for a quarter century. The company's shares have done well, almost tripling in value during the past five years, and since 2000 have soared over 50-fold. Intuitive's future seems bright. Solid revenue and earnings growth inspire confidence, with a commendable profit margin of 28%. The company 'offers ample growth opportunities, particularly overseas,' writes Morningstar analyst Alex Morozov. 'The ultimate ceiling for robotic surgery is virtually unlimited.' As Morozov notes, 'with the latest release of the next-generation platform, Intuitive should maintain its dominance.' Intuitive's da Vinci device uses a minimally invasive approach. It grew out of research by SRI International, with ample federal funding. Washington was drawn to the system's ability to perform long-distance surgery using robotics—a boon for battlefield medical care. As a standalone company, Intuitive first launched in Europe in 1999 and went public in the U.S. a year later. Still, while Intuitive enjoys a dominant position, another player in the field is worth a look as a value play—with a good chance of rewarding investors even more than the established leader will going forward. After all, Intuitive is not a cheap stock: Its price/earnings ratio is 75. Intuitive commands a market cap of $183 billion, while SS Innovations weighs in at just $685 million. SS Innovations International is a recent (founded 2019) startup that has shown encouraging growth, and joined Nasdaq in April, with its executives ringing the exchange's opening bell in early June. Its growth story is solid. To be sure, like most young companies, it is not profitable, but finances are improving. Annual revenue is up more than three times from 2023 to 2024. Cash is a reassuring 25% of total assets and long-term debt is zero. The company's strategic position appears to be firm, as well. It touts a price advantage of its latest product, SSi Mantra 3, over Intuitive's da Vinci. In the U.S., SS Innovations' focus will be on community hospitals and ambulatory surgical centers in medically under-served areas, such as rural America. SS Innovations is led by Dr. Sudhir Srivastava, its CEO (the SS in the business' name), and Dr. Frederic Moll, its vice chairman. Srivastava pioneered many current robotic procedures and has four decades of surgical experience. He holds 59% of the firm's shares. Moll, an American and onetime Johnson & Johnson executive, co-founded rival Intuitive. He holds approximately 10% of SS Innovation's shares. 'Our system is cheaper, more advanced and more user friendly,' Srivastava says. Plus, its remote feature is a big help for both doctors and patients, he goes on: 'I can do a surgery in Delhi with the patient in Bangalore, 2,000 miles away.' Another area where robotic surgery promises to be a boon is to help alleviate the doctor shortage in the U.S., Moll says. After all, surgery is a high-stress profession, and some practitioners bail out of their careers early, compounding the problem. Moll argues that the ease of using his firm's system will extend surgeons working lives. SS Innovations got its start in India, where Srivastava made his name using minimally invasive techniques. The company's SSi Mantra device is used around the world, primarily in Asia and South America. SS Innovations is next targeting the huge markets in the U.S. and Europe, and expects to receive a regulatory decision for SSi Mantra 3 from Washington in the first half of 2026. To date, the company has performed 4,000 surgeries over a large swath of categories, which include cardiac, gynecology, urology and colorectal procedures. Certainly, other companies offer surgical robotics. But unlike SS Innovations, these tend to be focused on specific types of ailments, such as PROCEPT BioRobotics (urinary and prostate), or are not a robotics pure play, like Medtronic (pacemakers, stents, insulin pumps). SS Innovations is all about robotic medicine, period. In cultural terms, robots often get a bad rap. Think HAL 9000 in the sci-fi classic, 2001 Space Odyssey: It murders the crew of astronauts. More concretely and currently, a lot of anxiety exists that artificial intelligence will dump humans out of their jobs. But robotic surgery, as seen by SS Innovations' promise, highlights the benign side of robots, and presents an investment opportunity worthy of consideration.
Medscape
06-06-2025
- Health
- Medscape
Medscape at 30: Three Decades of Amazing Breakthroughs
Medscape turns 30 in 2025. As part of the Medscape 2050 project speculating on what the field will look like 25 years from now, we're looking back at medical history as told through Medscape news coverage. A walk down memory lane, for sure, but also a celebration of the breakthroughs, headlines, and reporting that helped define medicine since 1995. July 5, 1996: Dolly the Sheep Cloned The birth of the first cloned animal led to some interesting cloning coverage over the years, whether from claims of a cloned human baby, ethical concerns surrounding human cloning, and advances in animal cloning as more than just a curiosity: Single Genetic Difference May Make Humans Easier to Clone Knockout Pigs Heralded as Future Organ Source FDA: Meat of Cloned Animals Safe to Eat 1998: Discovery of Human Embryonic Stem Cells A groundbreaking and polarizing discovery. Just over a year later, Medscape would look at the fallout, and advances would attempt to eliminate ethical concerns by tricking mouse and human cells to exhibit all the traits of embryonic stem cells. Coverage would span many conditions over the years: Is New Stem Cell Research Major Step Toward Diabetes Cure? Stem Cell Therapy Among Hot Topics at AAO 2017 Promising New Data on Stem Cell Therapy for Parkinson's 1997: da Vinci Robotic Surgical System Begins Development Minimally invasive robotic surgery via the da Vinci system was approved by the FDA in 2000, and by 2011, it was in use in more than 2000 hospitals around the world. Between 2011 and 2012, however, adverse event reports rose 34%, prompting this detailed Medscape slideshow, Robotic Surgery: Too Much, Too Soon? 2000: First Draft of the Human Genome Announced It wasn't perfect, it had gaps and wasn't fully understood, but the turn of the century marked the first map of the human genome, paving the way for what we now see as precision and personalized medicine. In 2020, Medscape commissioned a thorough charting of the genome over its first 20 years to see what grew from that first announcement. Early 2000s: Rise of Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) Genetic Testing (eg, 23andMe) Inexpensive genetic testing led to the advent of offering tests to consumers, and the most famous purveyor, 23andMe, debuted in 2006. This marked a shift in how people access and interpret genetic data — and raised concerns. It's been a bumpy ride: Ethical Considerations in DTC Genetic Testing 23andMe Relaunches Lower-Risk DTC Genetic Tests FDA OK's First DTC Genetic Risk Tests 23andMe Notifies Customers of Data Breach Into Its 'DNA Relatives' Feature 23andMe's Business Woes Raise Genetic Data Privacy Concerns: Ethicist 2009: Electronic Health Record (EHR) Adoption Incentivized by HITECH Act EHRs, now ubiquitous, started slow in 2009, with one report estimating adoption in US hospitals at less than 2%. All that changed of course, with Medscape eventually releasing annual reports on physicians and EHRs. And in 2024, we even asked if physicians should be compensated for their time using EHRs. Don't Get Too Hung Up on 'Meaningful Use' in an EHR EHR Adoption Grows Rapidly in Office-Based Physician Groups 2012: CRISPR-Cas9 Gene Editing Discovered 2016: First CRISPR Clinical Trial in Humans Gene editing, and the ethical arguments that went with it, took the medical world by storm a little over a decade ago. Medscape has been covering its potential therapeutic (and controversial) applications ever since including the 2018 birth of 'gene-edited babies' in China. 5 Things to Know About CRISPR New CRISPR Tools More Precise, but Targeting Mishaps a Worry CRISPR Gene Editing in Limelight at ASHG 2016 Bioethicist: History Tells Us CRISPR Fears Are Overblown 2016: Semaglutide Shows Superior Glucose Control and Weight Loss in SUSTAIN-6 Trials The hype begins. Not only shown effective for glucose control, semaglutide also demonstrated marked cardiovascular risk reduction in 2016. While that was nearly 10 years ago, it feels like we haven't had a day without GLP-1 news since. Oral GLP-1 Agonists Could Be Game Changers for Obesity Treating Obesity: Will New Miracle Drugs End the Crisis? GLP-1s Treat and Even Reverse Some Forms of Liver Disease GLP-1 Agonists Reduce Recurrent Atrial Fibrillation July-October 2017: CAR T-Cell Therapy Approved for Leukemia The FDA approved tisagenlecleucel-T (Kymriah, Novartis) and soon after a xicabtagene ciloleucel (Yescarta, Kite Pharma), the first two CAR T-cell therapies in 2017, opening the door for personalized cancer treatment and further progress beyond treating blood cancers. CARs Motor Through Leukemia, Part 2: 'Landscape Changing' CAR T Cells and Beyond: Breakthroughs and Challenges Ahead Outpatient CAR T: Safe, Effective, Accessible Next-Gen CAR T-Cell Therapy: Expanding Beyond Blood Cancers December 2020: mRNA Vaccines Approved After effectiveness of the Pfizer and Moderna COVID vaccines was documented, the FDA granted emergency use of both vaccines within a week of each other. This opened the door for further mRNA usage, including potential cancer vaccines. 4 Things to Know About Moderna's mRNA Cancer Vaccine New mRNA Vaccines in Development for Cancer and Infections 'Encouraging' Early Data for mRNA Vaccine in Glioblastoma New mRNA Vaccine May Shield Against C difficile Infections 2023: FDA Approvals in Medical Artificial Intelligence (AI), Especially Diagnostics, Increase While AI was not invented in 2023, that year became a tipping point in everything AI — from diagnostics to drug development to medical scribes, inspiring the first Medscape Physicians and AI Report, done annually since. A sampling of the flood of Medscape coverage: Minding the Machine: Assessing the Case for AI Regulations in Healthcare Harnessing FDA-Approved AI Technologies in Your Medical Practice The Protein Problem: The Unsolved Mystery of AI Drug Dev This Bill Could Make It Legal for AI to Prescribe Medicine AI vs Physicians in 2050: Happy Future or No Future?
