The modern technological revolution has brought about changes in healthcare that are reflected in many aspects, and surgical robots are one of the representatives. Designed to perform a variety of complex, minimally invasive surgeries, the PUAI Medical Surgical Robot consists of three main components: a surgeon console, a bedside robotic arm system, and an imaging system.
Robot-assisted surgery offers many advantages, including more precise surgical maneuvers, lower bleeding, and shorter post-operative recovery cycles. Despite the huge success of surgical robots in the medical field, their price has been a major constraint to their popularity. So, how much does a surgical robot cost?
Surgical robot prices vary depending on the brand, quality, model and features. Currently, the average product price of da Vinci surgical robots is about 23 million yuan, plus consumables and maintenance costs, the cost of each operation is more than 40,000 yuan. In comparison, domestic surgical robots cost between 14 and 17 million dollars.
Why are surgical robots so expensive?
First of all, surgical robots require a long period of research and development and approval through an approval process. The high cost of research and development, as well as the various certification and auditing fees, all become a significant part of the price of a surgical robot. Second, Intuitive Surgical USA holds hundreds of patents covering all aspects of surgical robotics. It holds the rights to the commercial operations and revenues of this technology and protects the intellectual property rights of its products in a variety of ways, making it difficult for other companies to infringe on its patents. In addition, the production cost of surgical robot manufacturing is also very high and the market size is relatively small, further increasing the cost of the business.
Overall, the high price of surgical robots is mainly due to the high technical threshold, the approval process is cumbersome, the rigidity of the right to control patents and production costs and other factors. This also makes China’s imports of “da Vinci” surgical robots become more than twice the price of expensive items.
In China’s policy all the way to the green light of the background, the domestic surgical robot industry ushered in a major opportunity. 2023 January, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other seventeen departments jointly issued the “Robot +” application of the implementation of the program of notice. In the field of health care, it is proposed that “encourage hospitals with conditions and needs to use robots to carry out precise and minimally invasive surgery, build standardized operating rooms for robotic applications, and study the standard specifications for the clinical application of surgical robots.” It can be seen that the surgical robot related industry policy tends to relaxation, fourteen five years during the number of surgical robot configuration is expected to further liberalization. In addition, with the gradual expiration of da Vinci robot patents, robotics track entrants will have more opportunities for development.
At present, Shanghai, Beijing, Hunan, Guangdong, Jiangxi and other provinces and cities have been surgical robots and related consumables and other items into the scope of payment of medical insurance, surgical robots clinical penetration will be further enhanced. Domestic surgical robots are expected to gradually replace imported products with low price and high technology.
