The euproject Smart Autonomous Robotic Assistant Surgeon (SARAS), participated by Dr. Alicia Casals from CREB UPC – Research Centre for Biomedical Engineering has the goal to develop the next-generation of surgical robotic systems, allowing a single surgeon to execute Robotic Minimally Invasive Surgery (R-MIS) without the need of an expert assistant surgeon, thereby increasing the social and economic efficiency of a hospital while guaranteeing the same level of safety for patients.

Currently during a laparoscopic or a robotic assisted surgical procedures several units of medical personnel are requested in the operating room (as you can see at the picture): The  main surgeon tele-operating the surgical robot (like a DaVinci Robot), the assistan surgeon to assist him and nurses. This practice  leads to an inefficient management of the hospitals’ economic resources and to unnecessary long waiting lists for patiens.

The robot developed by the SARAS project will be called solo-surgery system and will consist of a pair of cooperating and autonomous robotic arms holding the surgical instruments.

A great challenge with a consortium including: Università degli Studi di Verona, Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Università degli Studi di Ferrara, Ospedale San Raffaele, University of Dundee, Oxford Brookes University, Medineering – Surgical Robotics, ACMIT Gmbh – Austrian Center for Medical Innovation and Technology, Libera Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele, fondazione centro San Raffaele and Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya.