Secrets of the Robotic Dance (The World’s Busiest Surgical Robot)

Abstract

Over the past two decades, the robotic platform has revolutionized minimally invasive surgery, allowing for the evolution of complex open techniques into less traumatic, minimally invasive procedures. Increasing use among community surgeons (in many surgical specialties) has exponentially increased awareness by administrators to the rising costs and logistical issues associated with starting and maintaining a robotics program.

Now more than ever, techniques of improving robotic surgery efficiency and decreasing the inherent limitations of the human factor are being sought after. One of those techniques, among others, are expanded upon in this chapter.

By using the set of choreographed techniques presented in this chapter, we show where multiple data points were analyzed by one institution to identify factors involved with improving robotic surgery operating room turn over time and thus overall operating room utilization time that ultimately lead to reduced cost and improved efficiency. The one single robot described in this chapter won the unofficial designation of “busiest surgical robot in the world” by Intuitive Surgical. This chapter highlight steps involved in this “robotic dance technique” along with institutional cost benefits.