{"id":208572,"date":"2025-10-12T20:02:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-12T20:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/208572\/"},"modified":"2025-10-12T20:02:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-12T20:02:11","slug":"australian-medtech-company-remedy-robotics-achieves-breakthrough-in-neurointervention","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/208572\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian medtech company Remedy Robotics achieves breakthrough in neurointervention"},"content":{"rendered":"

The insight led him to hunt down his co-founder Jake Sganga, a robotics PhD student, after convincing a professor to introduce him. \u201cI bugged the robotics professor and said, \u2018Give me your smartest graduating PhD student; let me go chat with him\u2019,\u201d Bell said. \u201cI think he thought I was crazy, but I won him over.\u201d<\/p>\n

Remote operation of surgical robots has long been the industry\u2019s holy grail. Market leader Intuitive Surgical, now NASDAQ-listed, began with similar aspirations, but technical challenges over nearly 30 years made it impractical to deliver.<\/p>\n

Remedy has cracked it by building a full-stack solution, the hardware and software, to control everything from latency to the streaming of medical images. The company holds 45 patents on the system.<\/p>\n

The breakthrough is particularly significant for stroke treatment. Endovascular thrombectomy, where doctors thread catheters through arteries to remove blood clots from the brain, is considered the gold standard for stroke emergencies. But the procedure is so complex it is available only at specialist hospitals in big cities.<\/p>\n

\"Surgeons<\/p>\n

Surgeons at the University of Toronto after completing the successful world-first procedure.Credit: Remedy Robotics<\/p>\n

For the 445,000 stroke survivors in Australia, a figure expected to more than double by 2050, geography can be deadly. The economic cost of strokes alone is estimated at over $32 billion annually.<\/p>\n

Australian Stroke Alliance co-chair Professor Stephen Davis said the technology addressed a critical gap in care. Currently, Darwin stroke patients must be transferred 3000 kilometres to Adelaide for treatment.<\/p>\n

\u201cRemote indigenous communities virtually can\u2019t access this modern treatment because of the time barrier,\u201d Davis said. \u201cThis new technique allows the doctor in Darwin to put the catheter into the groin artery, and then the remote expert can do the rest.\u201d<\/p>\n

The technology will be validated through trials led by Professor Bernard Yan from the Royal Melbourne Hospital and Professor Hal Rice in Queensland. Initial procedures will be backed up by on-site specialists.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe believe it\u2019s possible, but it requires high-quality research to validate the technique,\u201d Davis said. \u201cIn the first instance, we\u2019ll be performing these studies with a back-up expert neurointerventionist at the rural centre, so that if the technique doesn\u2019t work remotely, there\u2019s someone on site who can do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Blackbird<\/p>\n

Blackbird Ventures partners Phoebe Harrop, Tom Humphrey and Michael Tolo.Credit: Blackbird<\/p>\n

Remedy Robotics\u2019 18-person team,15 of whom are technical, is now raising funds in the US to pursue Food and Drug Administration approval for local use while simultaneously planning Australian trials for remote stroke treatment. Bell declined to specify the funding target, but he said the company was \u201crelatively close to closing\u201d the round.<\/p>\n

Blackbird Ventures, which backed Remedy alongside US firm DCVC and Tony Fadell\u2019s Build Collective, sees the surgery milestone as validation of the company\u2019s ambitious vision.<\/p>\n

\u201cRemedy Robotics is pushing the boundaries of what\u2019s possible in modern medicine,\u201d said Blackbird partner Michael Tolo. \u201cThe team\u2019s ability to combine cutting-edge robotics, advanced machine learning, and real-time imaging to enable remote cardiovascular intervention is nothing short of transformative.\u201d<\/p>\n

The company has published academic articles on remote robotic neurointervention in leading journals and serves as the exclusive robotic partner of Mission Thrombectomy, a global stroke initiative.<\/p>\n

Loading<\/p>\n

Bell, who spent eight years as a doctor including cardiac surgery training in Sydney and air retrieval work across the South Pacific, said he never really loved medicine despite his family\u2019s medical dynasty.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a creative person \u2013 like a frustrated engineer,\u201d Bell said. \u201cWhat I find crazy is that we would tolerate that where someone lives should affect their access to healthcare.\u201d<\/p>\n

While some might see fully autonomous surgery in the future, Bell suspects \u201ca doctor will be involved for a very long time to come, even if they\u2019re just sitting back watching nothing goes wrong\u201d.<\/p>\n

Patient response to the world-first procedures has been enthusiastically positive. \u201cThe response so far has been very, very good,\u201d Bell said. \u201cI think patients see the upside of the technology.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The insight led him to hunt down his co-founder Jake Sganga, a robotics PhD student, after convincing a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208573,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[64,63,137,500],"class_list":{"0":"post-208572","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-healthcare"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}