Artificial intelligence is not a new field—it dates back to 1955. But in recent years, rapid advancements in hardware and software have significantly accelerated its development, unlocking powerful applications across industries, including healthcare. When integrated with robotic-assisted surgery, AI can be a transformative tool with the potential to enhance care delivery across specialties and clinical environments, empowering surgeons with actionable digital insights to help drive the future of patient care.
Imagine the possibilities when robotic platforms utilize data and digital tools to help elevate the impact of surgeons and care teams—before, during and after a procedure. By turning good data into meaningful insights and translating those insights into action, AI-integrated robotic platforms could facilitate better clinical decisions that result in better outcomes.
To best explore this topic, we must understand what defines good surgery. This starts by measuring and objectively assessing data and characteristics of a surgical task. Robotic systems give us that opportunity and the foundation of a new field of research called surgical data science, where advanced, high-performing robotics converge with AI-based intelligent algorithms.
Consider this: AI excels at recognizing patterns and understanding complex variable interactions—precisely the kind of complexity found in surgery. We are only beginning to see its potential to help quantify what good surgery looks like, paving the way for better surgical training and more informed clinical decisions across the entire care continuum.
Think of the evolution of AI-enabled robotic surgery like a four-layer cake: each layer—from data capture and analysis to enhanced clinical decision-making, increased surgeon autonomy and real-time procedural guidance—builds upon the last, creating a more informed, more adaptive approach to surgery.
Layer one is the foundation: high-quality, connected data. By capturing rich, multimodal inputs—audio, video and system events—we can build a comprehensive view of what happens across the care pathway. The aim is to link procedural events to operational efficiency and clinical outcomes, enabling meaningful analysis and improvement. But, to generate reliable insights, the data must be accurate, complete and representative. Interoperability remains a considerable challenge—no single healthcare provider or medical device company holds the full picture. We need secure, robust systems for sharing data and building truly connected datasets to move forward.
Building on that data foundation, the next layer is about extracting insights that can directly influence outcomes. For example, imagine tracking the forces applied to tissue at critical moments during a procedure—data that could reveal what leads to better clinical results. Imagine if surgeons gained greater awareness from advanced, connected systems. An integrated platform that is part of a broader surgical data science strategy could use data (in a safe and robust way) to improve performance, optimize outcomes and elevate the standard of care. Better still, this could usher in an industry shift toward personalized, data-driven feedback loops in modern surgery.
The third layer, data enablement, facilitates better clinical decision-making and increases surgeon autonomy by delivering the right information at the right time. Personalized and purposeful learning can help accelerate learning curves, reduce surgeon stall rates, shorten OR time and potentially optimize pre-procedure planning.
The final layer is augmented dexterity—real-time assistance that supports the physician during the procedure, in which some decisions and sub-tasks are automated, and others are made by the physician, enhancing awareness and precision at the point of care. The physician synthesizes real-time insights with what they already have available to make better decisions and focus on more complex situations. The potential of augmented dexterity is just beginning to unfold.
Consider an elderly patient with Crohn’s disease undergoing a challenging procedure in the future. Now imagine an advanced robotic system fully integrated into the electronic medical record that can leverage insights from a combination of published evidence and potentially millions of patient cases. When the surgeon logs in to perform a right colectomy, the system can highlight critical steps and key operational performance indicators tied to outcomes. It might even flag a top risk—like bowel perforation from excessive force—and recommend force assistance to help the surgeon operate freely while automatically keeping force within safe limits.
This is just one example of how surgical data science can help shape the future of patient care—and how AI, as an analytical tool, can help deliver tangible value. If properly navigated, it has the potential to reduce variability, improve efficiency, lower costs and ultimately improve outcomes for patients. Just as important, it could help facilitate continuous improvement throughout a surgeon’s career, even serving as a personalized AI coach.
As with most technologies, thoughtful governance is essential to avoid misuse or erroneous application. Legal AI frameworks such as the EU Artificial Intelligence Act can help foster trustworthy, human-centric AI while safeguarding fundamental rights and safety. The hope is that the emerging AI governance frameworks will harmonize over time.
While the future of healthcare will demand deeper collaboration and a bold, discovery-driven mindset, I am genuinely excited about what’s ahead. By expanding innovation and discovery together in a virtuous cycle of evidence using AI, machine learning and surgical data science, we have the potential to significantly impact the future of patient care across multiple specialties and clinical settings.
Brian Miller, PhD, is executive vice president/chief digital officer, Intuitive.
A Premier Corporate Partner of ACHE, Intuitive was founded in 1995 to create innovative, robotic-assisted systems that help empower physicians and hospitals to make surgery less invasive. For more information, go to ache.org/Intuitive.