The chief of surgery at Clinica Las Condes in Santiago, Chile, Ricardo Funke, carried out a gallbladder removal alone during a laparoscopic surgery on Monday, thanks to an autonomous AI-guided camera.
Using software that autonomously directed the surgical camera along with magnetic surgical instruments, AI tracked the surgeon’s tools, adjusting angles and following automatically.
"The camera was following me wherever I moved my hands and the whole process was excellent," Funke told Reuters after the surgery. "This camera lets us do the surgery alone, I did it alone with the robot."
Companies, universities, and research centers across the world have been developing AI-assisted tools to assist in or perform surgery.
Precedence Research reports that the global surgical robot market was estimated to be $15.6 billion in 2024 and is expected to reach $64.4 billion by 2034.
Researchers at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University in July reported on an AI-guided robot that carried out a surgical procedure on pig livers and gallbladders.
They said July's surgery heralded a major step towards automated medical procedures. Alberto Rodriguez, CEO of Levita Magnetics, who provided the technology for Monday's surgery in Santiago, echoed the same sentiment, "This is the first step in surgical automation with a real patient in the operating room where we showed that AI can help the surgeon."
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