A growing segment of healthcare is in medical robotics - and that can get divided down into various categories. One of those is Endolumenal robotics. Which basically means a Robot that drives inside a tube.
Now that category can be further subdivided into vascular and no vascular “tubes”. (Endovascular).
Using the vascular tubes you can arrive at the heart or the brain using robots.
So you end up with Endovascular / cardiovascular robots for the heart (stents, PFO, Valves etc etc) - and you can also have endo brain robots (Endovascular / Neurovascular robots)
None of those I’m going to talk about today as it’s a different field from the “Endoscopes” I’m going to talk about - BUT much of the primary catheter advancement and “driving” technology can be used to get catheter tips where you want them to go. However there is little need for “seeing” directly by an endoscope in the vasculature (lot of blood) - and the dimensions of the catheters can be quite different. So for today just park the endovascular - but flip back in every so often to understand the navigation technology can absolutely come across…
So the companies I talk about today - could create cross over devices into endovascular robotics. (Think for the future.)
In fact - if you look at Hansen Medical and Auris - the synergies were clear back then to Fred Moll.
But today I’m going to dig into endolumenal robots that see - diagnose - and eventually treat using "robotic endoscopes" !
And for a very good reason, most of these systems start threirtechnlogy in the lung - take a journey to the urological tract and eventually find themselves in the GI space. Follow my journey here.