Digital Surgery – A Paradigm Shift for the Healthcare Industry

Surgery, like many medical science fields, is experiencing a marked digital shift. Digital surgery is defined as the combination of robotics, instrumentation, Artificial Intelligence (AI), advanced imaging, connectivity, and data analytics to improve the pre-, peri- and post-operative operations (both clinical and non-clinical). Incremental advances in these technologies have made digital surgery much more sophisticated and adoptable. While digital surgery is largely synonymous with robotic surgery today, there are significant benefits that digital surgery offers over robotic surgery.

This viewpoint explores the evolving digital surgery space in terms of the leading demand drivers, industry M&A trends, and key digital levers shaping the digital surgery ecosystem. We also envisage the next-generation digital surgery platform with a technology framework and adoption phases. Additionally, we enlist the top barriers to adoption and the road ahead for different healthcare stakeholders.