NaoTrac, the First AUTOPILOT Brain Surgical Robot
NaoTrac, the first “Autopilot” surgical robot for brain surgery was announced by Brain Navi Ltd. on 29 Nov. 2018.
On 7 Nov. 2018, the First in Human trial took place in Hualien Tzu-chi Medical Center in Taiwan. This is the first time that a surgeon can do an operation with an AUTOPILOT robot under the planned pathway. An EVD tube (Medtronic) was inserted into the brain of a hydrocephalus patient within 30 sec. The procedures were done beautifully perfect and the post-op CT showed the tube is exactly on the planned path.
Jerry, the CEO of Brain Navi is the fellow of “Stanford Taiwan Biomedical Program” and a serial entrepreneur in Taiwan. Jerry said,” From a concept to a product to the FIH, it cost only 4 years for us because we had a lot of strong supports from the IT, universities and National Research Labs.”
Brain Navi was established in Taiwan in 2014. Taiwan was well known as an IT island with lots of IT, IC and mechanical companies. Taiwan has lots of resources from all over the world and is strong in system integration. Besides, the medical/surgical quality in Taiwan is at the top level among the developed countries. Thus Taiwan is going to be the center of biomedical innovation in the world.