Two pioneers of the surgical navigation and robotics revolution who sold their companies for massive amounts of money (Rony Abovitz, co-founder of MAKO Surgical Corp. and Eric Timko, CEO of BlueBelt Technologies, Inc.) have moved on—but in ways that point to where this market basket of technologies which we refer to as surgical navigation or robotics is heading.
Prepare to be amazed.
Moore’s Law
Surgical navigation and robotic assist devices are, essentially, processors of visual, sensory and other data.
So, what happens when the “brains” of these systems get smarter, faster and cheaper?
Fifty years ago, the then head of research for Fairchild Semiconductor and later co-founder of Intel, Gordon Moore, was asked by Electronics Magazine to predict the evolution of integrated circuits. His answer, that the number of transistors that could fit on a single chip of silicon would likely double every year making twice the computing power available for just a little bit more money, was so accurate that it was later dubbed “Moore’s Law.”
In 1975, he modified his prediction to a doubling roughly every two years.
On the 50th anniversary of his prediction, Moore recalled those early days in an interview with the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman, “I had been looking at integrated circuits—[they] were really new at that time, only a few years old—and they were very expensive. I was beginning to see, from my position as head of a laboratory, that the technology was going to go in the direction where we would get more and more stuff on a chip and it would make electronics less expensive.…I had no idea it was going to turn out to be a relatively precise prediction, but I knew the general trend was in that direction.”
Intel’s newest computer chip, the fifth-generation Core i5 processor, is 3,500 times more powerful, 90,000 times more energy efficient and about 60,000 times cheaper than Intel’s 1971 4004 chip.
If a 1971 Volkswagen Beetle had improved at the same rate as computer processors, the car would hit a top speed of 300,000 miles per hour, get two million miles per gallon of gas and cost 4 cents.
Here’s a chart which shows Moore’s Law in action.
Medtronic’s StealthStation Evolution From 1995 – 2019
One way to see the Moore’s Law effect in surgical tools like navigation systems or robotic assist devices is to look at the changes in StealthStation, Medtronic’s surgical navigation system and, soon, part of the surgical suite eco-system which includes the Mazor X robotic assist system.
StealthStation was introduced to surgeons in 1995 at a price of about $300,000—or more accurately, $3,000 per 100 MHz of computing speed and processing power. The system could integrate CT and MRI images into a surgical plan and gave surgeons a targeted entry point and, in effect, a “map” of where to go next.
The 2019 version of StealthStation is approximately 350x more powerful than the 1995 version and 1/200th the cost per 100 MHz ($15/100 MHz).
And today’s StealthStation is like an interactive Google or Waze map versus the 1994’s static, non-interactive image of a map.
It also integrates into an eco-system of robotic-assist devices, smart power-tools and instruments and all the imaging tools including O-Arm.
Cheaper, faster, more powerful and functional.
What possibilities does that open up over the next 10 years?
