Society of Robotic Surgery 2025 meeting roundup (SRS 2025)
- Steve Bell
- Jul 22, 2025
- 10 min read
Updated: Jul 30, 2025
Fresh off the back of SRS2025 in Strasbourg with featured sessions at IRCAD.
I wanted to reflect on the meeting and highlight some of the key messages, key technologies, and say where there is pointing to for the near term future.
So let me start with summarising the main themes from my point of view and then dig deeper into why I think that and what I think it means for the industry.
Main themes:
Telesurgery (and broader tele…. thingy)
AI and real world implications
Broader than surgical robots
The OR of the future and additional technologies.
Competition
Let me take each of these one at a time and dig deeper into the subject.
Telesurgery (and broader tele… thingy)
From moment one at the investors day we were greeted by Jacques Marescaux with a nod to the first ever telesurgery procedure the Lindbergh operation from 2001. And this then set the theme for the continual reminder of all things telesurgery. Plus a highlight by the World Health Organisation just how important this was.
But we also heard about an important set of Guidelines and another important set of Suggestions by different groups that were presented on how it all should be done. Good solid advice on how telesurgery backbones and organisation should work. How the tech should be telesurgery ready in all aspects including Cyber Security.
We then had multiple leaders in Telesurgery such as Microport Medbot, SS Innovations and others on panels that discussed their ongoing and growing mass of telesurgery achievements.
This included USA to Angola under the only IDE protocol by Medbot and Toumai.
Also using low earth satellites for telesurgery to demonstrate it is not all wired point to point on reserved networks. And even discussed recent cardiac telesurgery via SSi Mantra (on the bak of the week of robotic cardiac heart transplant surgery. Yes you read that right.)
There were telesurgery demos a go-go at the event with live surgeries, recorded surgeries and live demos on inanimate models.
But why was this important for SRS 2025. Well you can’t talk about surgical robotics without having Intuitive give a keynote fireside chat. The CEO Dave Rosa actually appeared in person, and then hung around for a few days. That right there tells you how they are ultra focused. It wasn't an 'in and out' to go look after some other division. It was pure surgical robotics focus.
Side note - the fact that other most senior leaders from some of the competing companies just video recorded in… well to me that right there speaks volumes. Not even “live” just a recorded session. Well it feels to me this is potentially a side gig for them - just saying. You had the CEO of Intuitive there !
But why was Intuitive so important - because at SRS 2025 for the first time they did a live demo of their capabilities of the DV5 - via a 4000 km telesurgery demo.
Can they do it? Yes they can.
Is it on public release? No not yet.
Can every DV5 do it … yes.
Can every Xi do it … I suspect so.
When you are the market leader but are behind - you need to lean on the old Apple play on “innovation.” We are not the first but we are carefully the best.
And they will be the widest used in days when they roll it out - because this is a network effect once turned on. As in - you need both sides to make this work - operator side and patient side - and well with 10K plus systems... they have instant critical mass. (often known as the fax machine tipping point.)
Of note was the capabilities they showed (and this is where tele thingy comes in.) Let me explain.
The ability to do telesurgery (the physical act) as a primary surgeon or as a tele preceptor has been a focus of many companies.
Instead it was clear Intuitive see it as a tele “ecosystem” - where surgery can be done direct - telesurgery - and with their dual console hand off of instruments.
But they also added in a cool demo of “Tele force feedback” where they had surgeons at distance having very good force sensation. All surgeoins could feel it.
They were also able to do multiple hand offs and hand backs of instrument control - and for the surgeons they felt they could have been in the same room. This is part of the illusion created by immersive consoles.
This is not new (before you scream) - and Kanduo have shown this in dual and triple consoles - (less the force feedback). Where they dod hand offs across three systems and with dual real time operators.
Also Medbot have shown the force feedback at distance. So it's not a "first"
However Intuitive are showing that “completeness” to make it feel polished and complete before deploying.
And they then add in “telepresence” as if you are in the room.
Teleproctoring (they’ve been doing for years via hub) with in built teletsration and in console features.
It all felt - very polished and complete; even if it’s not ready for prime time yet.
But the fact they did this is big. It’s validation and it’s having some people start to think "if it's Intuitive it must be real" - and they did it all over the Sovato backbone system.
If you want to know about Sovato by Yulun Wang then get to their website. They are thinking about end to end security, redundancy, low jitter and low latency point to point lines, scheduling, insurance, payments, credentialing and a host of other stuff. It really is not just about the 5G connection. Anyone can do that.
Oh and an even bigger surprise was that another monster of medtech - Medtronic - showed a similar demonstration for HUGO. This is again a big big sign that validates telesurgery and shows that it is now here and now real… despite other companies having done it first- the big companies are saying “there’s something here.” And when the big companies roll it out...
Many people still have not fully understood the use cases beyond technical demo - but I felt at SRS 2025 we broke through and started to see this for the utility it has in efficiency, training, support cases, and even helping to get expertise to rural areas and developing countries.
It’s complex and see my post here to understand better the real world use cases.
But just understand it is here and it is real... and it is not going away. Oh and if you have a system with telesurgery - you better get it telesurgery ready or be left in the cold.
AI and real world implications
You could not go anywhere without hearing the word NVIDIA - they were literally with all companies - presentations - and sessions. Their own presentations were impressive.
AI risks being a BS bubble - but honestly I feel that already we saw real world applications at SRS. And some of it was not the high glamour imaging stuff we all dream about - but I heard time and time again about AI already with LLMs helping out in drudgery that frees up clinicians for focusing on clinical delivery not paperwork. This one small change is having ripple effects on clinical delivery. LLMs were sited many times in already foing case reports - admin and the stuff that has sucked physicians from patient care. It feels the tide is turning on AI generated paperwork.
But pile on top of that a lot of the data being crunched by AI and insights being delivered back to surgeons, care teams and hospitals - and I felt I saw real world applications coming to the users. It's not super widespread yet but it's here and real.
There was a lot of talk about AI agents and AI imaging. In the Shark Tank session there was a lot of AI thrown in - from image interpretation to self navigating laryngoscopes to AI smile design in robotic dentistry. AI was present everywhere - and none more so than the demo by Johns Hopkins on autonomous AI driven gallbladder removal in excised tissue (showed up in sveral .talks.) It felt a long way off at the last SRS and a lot of “hyped promise”. But now it feels like it is in some of the products, and absolutely being engineered into the next drop of products.
AI2M was held during the SRS meeting and a ton of innovations were discussed and a lot of future gazing - but the theme was “It is coming, and it is coming faster than you think.”
Broader than surgical robots
2019 at the first SRS you would have seen the da Vinci - and that's it. Roll forwards six short years and the congress hall was full of companies with surgical robots - and … non surgical robots.
Wade through the sessions and you would have heard entire new categories of robots being discussed in both “development” terms but also now in real world clinical terms.
Many even now already have clearances in parts of the world and some are even commercially being used.
From dental robots with Lupin, to endovascular robots (coronary, neurovascular, large vessel), to endocardiac robots for valves and delivery of PFA. It moved to micro robots for needle puncture, to imaging robots. We had histotripsy and other focal energy robots. I saw laryngeal tube insertion robots, ortho robots, spine robots, endolumenal robots from single channel (Ion and Monarch) and multichannel such as Endoquest.
Basically the world has moved on from mainframe surgical robots as the main talking point.
You just to sit in the investor day sessions or the main congress sessions to see the breadth of healthcare robotics on show at SRS. In six short years it has been a mushrooming explosion in robotic systems. And super exciting.
The OR of the future and additional technologies
What is becoming more and more clear is that the operating room of the future is changing.
It was clear from this SRS that what’s important in an OR is really moving around data and workflow management.
If you looked at a lot of the shark tank tech, upcoming products - they are not the complete robots but many of the adjunct technologies that goes in, on or around the robot. Communication systems, software, vision systems, AI, data, insufflation, access and other ancillary products that are getting smarter.
In vision systems alone there were half a dozen exciting new imaging systems as adjuncts. Look to Hypervision or Oncolux or others and you see that augmenting the imaging chains within the robot, or seeing what the robot cannot see with the human eye was critical. ICG systems were standard and more and more robots were incorporating white light ICG.
Pre procedure scans translated into intraoperative structure identification - I saw four systems at least. Real time able to see where the tumour was or the blood vessels or other structures - all mapped onto real moving anatomy.
OR data systems, evidence systems, informatics, video analysis were abundant. Some integrated into systems, some system agnostic. All were looking at taking data in and giving insights back. And more and more were about improving operative work flow - OR organisation and improving throughput. Key needs for modern healthcare.
It was clear that SRS is no longer just about “the robot” but about robotics and digital surgery / robotic therapies / digital therapies attached to robotics. It’s way wider and bigger now.
Competition
As someone that helped build the number two surgical robot and still the biggest competitor to Intuitive - I was delighted to walk that congress hall floor and see so many new robots and so many different companies from all across the world. Some in soft tissue robotics both open and lap. Some in hard tissue. Some in focal therapies. Some in endolumenal. More and more types of robots.
But it was to see the number of competitors in the category of Intuitive’s da Vinci - From Medtronic, to Microport Medbot, to Kangduo Sagebot. CMR Surgical, Rob Surgical, Moon Surgical and distal motion. Ssi mantra, Medicaroid, Shuruii, Ronovo and others.
There were many multiport and a lot of single ports - Single Port is growing fast . Competition was from across the world. Europe, India, china, Korea, Japan and the USA. And some robots are really being tuned for the markets they want to win in.
More systems in development - there are over 33 now out there or coming just in soft tissue Intuitive like robots. But there were even new additions announced like Artisential that just came from nowhere.
And we saw the addition of competitive technologies closing the gap to the market leader with Ligasure, Rubina, other advanced energy systems and imaging upgrades. And of course telesurgery (as I started up top.)
But it wasn’t just the technology - it was the scale of the competition - Intuitive were not the biggest booth or the most walked across booth. Even though they did a formal launch of the DV 5 for Europe - which was welcomed by a lot of surgeons.
The Chinese companies had a dominating presence at SRS (although Edge were notably absent… bit weird.)
In the meetings - there was a great share of voice - and even more sharing of the ever growing numbers of competitive surgical cases, publications and abstracts.
We saw some competitors show their strengths - like telesurgery or cardiac focus. Others were about site of care - like ACS vs main operating hospitals. Advanced digital manual laparoscopy like Moon or Levita.
What was refreshing was that is was not just a da Vinci fest. It was a well spread range of competitive presentations and live surgeries.
Recorded, semi live, live and demo. We saw all companies getting air time (credit to Vip Patel and the organising committee) and demonstrating their capabilities. And what I saw was much better instrument capabilities, system stability, kinematics and more. Competitors were credible and reliable and started to look like credible alternatives.
For me SRS 2025 was a watershed for showing it is a thriving broad category - not just a few research projects.
And I cannot stress enough that competition is very very very healthy. It may be just my opinion, but I feel that even Intuitive benefited from the competition. Their game is high… but it still feels like they sharpen their pencil even more now with competition knocking on the door. And I feel that some competitors may have even pushed them into telesurgery, and potentially assessing and addressing new markets where robotics have never been before. Think parts of Africa.
Competition is here and healthy and helps this industry.
Summary
Variety and progress. All performed at distance by telesurgery. That might be a good summary. But on top of the themes - it was a great meeting for networking - and I will stick my neck out and say it may be the best healthcare meeting of the year on many fronts.
If you have anything to do with healthcare robotics - then you must - must - must attend this meeting. For the tech, the companies and above all for the networking.
See you next year in Miami.
These are just opinions opf the author for educational purposes.
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