Intuitive Surgical history

Since 1995, Intuitive has advanced minimally invasive care through advanced robotic systems, end-to-end learning, and value-added services.

Mona’s first procedure was a cholecystectomy performed in 1997 by Jacques Himpens, MD, a bariatric surgeon out of Saint-Blasium General Hospital in Dendermonde, Belgium99 Himpens J, Leman G, Cadiere G. Telesurgical laparoscopic cholecystectomy.

What was now known as da Vinci was again sent to Europe in 1998 for testing.

1999 Da Vinci Surgical System is introduced.

In 2000, the da Vinci Surgery System broke new ground by becoming the first robotic surgery system approved by the FDA for general laparoscopic surgery.

The system was in need of an application and found it in prostate surgery, for which the FDA granted approval in June 2001.

In 2002 Moll and Younge left Intuitive to found another medical start-up, Hansen Medical, which developed a robotic system to move diagnostic catheters within a patient in order to perform procedures.

Moll remained on Intuitive's board of directors until the beginning of 2003.

In 2004 revenues increased 51 percent to $138.8 million and Intuitive recorded net income of $23.5 million, the company's first profitable year.

While Intuitive was nearing profitability, however, the other major player in the field, Integrated Surgical Systems, was struggling to survive and in 2005 shut down.

He served as President, starting in July 2007, and before that served as Chief Operating Officer and held various engineering management roles during his more than two decades at the company.

He became Chief Executive Officer of Intuitive in January 2010.

Still, in 2011, platform adjustments and specific instruments were developed to allow a single-port access, overcoming laparoscopic limitations.

2012;26(1):286.,1111 Cadiere GB, Himpens J, Vertruyen M, Favretti F. The world's first obesity surgery performed by a surgeon at a distance.

REVO-I, a Korean surgical platform by Meere Company South Korea entered the market in 2017 after the Korean FDA approval in a very similar da Vinci Si prototype, and seeking a more cost-effective model.

In 2018, a variety of abdominal procedures were safely completed with the SPORT prototype, in the preclinical setting showing its feasibility2323 Seeliger B, Diana M, Ruurda JP, Konstantinidis KM, Marescaux J, Swanström LL. Enabling single-site laparoscopy: the SPORT platform.

2019;26(1):57-65.. Concerning ventral hernia repairs, encouraging outcomes have been described allowing even more complex abdominal wall reconstructions in a minimally invasive approach by the robotic platform1717 Morrell ALG, Morrell AC, Cavazzola LT, Pereira GSS, Mendes JM, Abdalla RZ, et al.

2020; 36(3):128-35.. Currently, most issues confronting robotic assisted procedures are especially related to its costs and longer operative time.