Interesting Robotic Study: Intuitive Initiates the JURA 1.0 Study

Robotics Expert Steve Bell intrigued by Intuitive's new Imaging study

SPOILER ALERT: if you don't want to know what companies like Intuitive are working on then please don't read these blogs. All this info is in the public domain - BUT you have to dig really deep to find it. I have ORCA 1 to help me. For some people they are curious what is coming down the pipe - but for others it is just spoiling the surprise. So be warned. This blog contains spoilers.

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I've been tracking Intuitive's Imaging tech stack for some time - and I'm always intrigued when there's a new study like this.

For a while I've thought their current imaging stack is a little dated and recent 510K (or not so recent) indicated they are building a formidable image chain that will see well beyond the human eye. I for one am super excited.

See post here : https://www.howtostartupinmedtech.com/post/are-intuitive-about-to-seriously-update-their-imaging-capabilities

That is when this grabbed my eye... and so I'm trying to piece things together.

Disclaimer: *** This is could be off track as info is scarce ***

This study flashed up on my dashboard. Now if you dig deeper into the scant paperwork around this you do get a few clues and insights -- intruiging.

Now often if a trial is named something like "The JURA trial" and JURA stands for an acronym of the treatment - it would not also say "SYSTEM" after it. And this clearly says JURA SYSTEM V 1.0. And they are evaluating this system in humans under this protocol. And it is recruiting - so we have potentially a working "system" that is in fairly late stage. It could be a project name internally for the company - as I didn't find any trademarks registered to Intuitive for this. But there is a good Whisky !

The next insight comes with the principal investigator:

Prof Vahmeijer is a leading academic on imaging modalities - especially the use of Fluorescence imaging (Like ICG or rather NIR) to excite molecules for visualisation - especilly in cancer. And that is very "interesting."

The full list of publications he has is way more impressive - but it starts to lead me to believe this is possibly part of the new Intutitive imaging system - and they might have a project name of JURA (as I said no trademarks filed). And that this imaging system may be working with some of the new molecules (fluorophores) I know Intuitive have been in co-development of for quite a few years. Maybe it's finally here.

If it is - and this is a very BIG if... this would be a landmark shift in robotic imaging and hail in a new era of imaging systems to bring more to the world of surgery. These types of Fluorophores can be targeted to specific tumours - and tumour types. With Prof's roles in pancreatic tumours - that could well be one of the first areas they are looking at in the feasibility study?

This is an impressive individual to have as part of your clinical investigation team for such an exciting new technology.

So I look at the indications in this study - and well it is fairly broad - and could be for looking at blood flow, anastamotic tissue viability - and the pancreas. So maybe cancer cells?

What I suspect is that this is their multimodal imaging system, multi fluorophores, maybe (maybe) OBL or / and maybe multispectral? But I'm almost certain it is their white light ICG (and about time). So I'm suspecting an imaging upgrade in the next 12 months - maybe?

Curious to see what this trail shows and where it leads. I'll keep you updated.

These are just opinions by the author and speculations based on public information sources. They are for education purposes only and can be wrong.