Inside Surgical Robotics Training & Development 

One of the key challenges in the surgical robotics space is getting hospitals and practitioners to start using new technology. On Episode 9 of The Surgibots Podcast I had the opportunity to sit down with Richard Vincent, the CEO & Co-Founder of FundamentalVR, to talk about their innovative training platform. Richard shared his insights on the state of training in the surgical robotics field, as well as giving me inside knowledge about FundamentalVR’s immersive haptic technology.  

How is the platform set up? 

 Our platform has three main parts, which can be used individually or together. The first is haptic VR, which is the gold standard. It's the amalgamation of the situational awareness that comes with being in virtual reality alongside the sense of touch, weight, resistance and force feedback. All of those elements are what we call kinesthetic haptics. That provides surgeons with knowledge of what it feels like to reset the bone, the weight of a liver as I'm moving it out of the way within the abdominal space, and so on and so forth. What we're trying to do within the haptic system is give you the sense of being in that space and help you learn the physical cues, which allows you to recognise when things are going right and when they're going wrong. Most surgeons and physicians will tell you that the sense of touch is vital to their precision.  

The second part of our platform is a slightly downgraded version of that. So it's a standalone VR system which is great for scale. This is a relatively standard headset that gives you situational awareness in a variety of scenarios and procedural walkthroughs. It doesn’t give you the same experience of feeling what you’re doing of course, but this is more applicable to early stages of training within medical school or residencies.  

The third and final piece is something we call Collaboration VR. That's a multi user piece that lets us carry out training as a team. If I'm going into a Cath Lab, I'm probably going in with three or four other people, or if I'm going into an operating room there might be a team of fifteen. You could do that within a simulation to learn the team dynamics. And really importantly, even without the lead physician there, the rest of the team can still practise and rehearse. It allows you to do all of that without physically coming together. All three of those modules stitch together and enable people to collaborate together across the platform. 

How do you ensure that your simulations and scenarios are accurate to real life? 

Within the business we have a fantastic team of medical doctors and educators who are trying to break down different procedures and understand where the key educational needs are within that procedure. We’re focussing on how to bring that to life within the simulation, whether that’s physically, virtually or by applying some basic educational learning theory. We’ve also worked with key opinion leaders from medical device companies and pharma companies to figure out what really matters to them for their training and development.  

If your audience is a set of surgeons that have been doing a procedure for 20 years and you need to get them to understand a new technique, device or implant that’s going to change the way they do that procedure, you don't need to teach them the approach. Your training should focus on the area that really matters to them. That’s where our partnerships come in, because they help us understand which bits of training are applicable at each stage. We take our medical panel, plug in our customers' KOLs within hospital groups and figure out what matters to them, then code that into our program and bring it to life. 

What will the surgical training and education space look like in the future? 

What we're going to see is a much wider palette of capabilities available to healthcare practitioners with more joined up outcome data. We need to get a place where true health economic outcomes are a priority. The only way we can get there is to keep integrating our tech into the full delivery system so that we can show the outcomes of somebody taught using an immersive system and determine whether the health economic outcome is improved as a result of it. That's when people will start understanding what this technology can do. The true human and economic benefits include less error, costs and time in hospital for patients.  

The other thing we will see improve is access to skills. The World Health Authority says that 5 billion people worldwide don't have access to good surgical skills, and that has a real impact on their lives. We can change that paradigm through immersive technology, and we're doing it already with one of our partners. Our system goes everywhere, but particularly it goes to lots of third world locations where it's teaching really basic cataract procedures that are life changing for the individuals who are involved in it. Our tech is going to improve basic training in developing countries, improve patient outcomes and give the health professionals a better career and working environment.  

To learn more about training and development within the surgical robotics industry, tune in to Episode 9 of The Surgibots Podcast here.