Intuitive surgical sees robotic systems demand surge in India

Intuitive Surgical, the US-based medical equipment maker, known for its robotic surgical system da Vinci, said it is seeing post-Covid demand surge from hospitals in India, as they aggressively expand into robotics.

The demand for robotic-assisted surgical systems isn't limited to large hospital chains of metro and tier-1 cities, but is also coming from standalone hospitals and hospitals based in smaller cities.

"We have more than doubled our installations in a year compared to what we were doing pre-Covid," said Mandeep Singh Kumar, vice-president and country GM, Intuitive India, in an interview to ET.


Kumar said the big push is coming from pent-up demand as hospitals were not investing during Covid, there was a realisation on the importance of shorter recovery times that robotic-assisted surgery provides that maximizes the operational efficiency of the bed capacity., along with reduction in complications.

"The two peak segments we were focusing on were the top hospital networks... like Apollo, Fortis, Max and Manipals. And then there were research and referral teaching government institutions like AIIMS (Delhi), JIPMER (Puducherry) etc. These are the torch bearers of bringing this technology, adopting it," Kumar said.