Versius v. da Vinci; Robot Wars?

New ‘Versius’ robot surgery system coming to NHS hails the BBC News website.

This is of course excellent news as the use of RAS (Robotic Assisted Surgery) has been much underused in the UK. In fact, early figures from our Kidney Cancer UK *patient survey indicates that of the 100’s who completed our survey so far, under 11% were treated by RAS. As the story states the impact on the patient using RAS is vastly reduced; bringing recovery times down, tiny incisions instead of the large and painful scars and many more advantaged to the patient and the pockets of the NHS long-term.  Of course, the story focuses on the smaller more manageable machines as opposed to the da Vinci robots currently in service in 70 hospitals across the UK but, will the reduction in the size of the robot be reflected in the size of the cost, making them practical to use on a day-to-day basis and help ease the cancer journey for patients.
Sadly, the last paragraph of the Fergus Walsh piece on the BBC website leaves the question hanging as we all read the article and wonder …’How much?’ to which there is no answer. So, more wait and see; let’s hope size really does matter.

*If you would like to take our kidney cancer patient survey, you can do it now at https://www.kcuk.org.uk/patient-survey-2018/ it closed on Sunday 9^th September at 23:55.

Read the full article here on the BBC website.