Corindus Vascular Robotics announced a partnership with Sanford Health and the Leona M and Harry B Helmsley Charitable Trust to launch a feasibility investigation for a remote robotics programme. For many patients living in rural areas, a procedure as critical and life-saving as an angioplasty may only be available at a facility more than two hundred miles away.
Following the feasibility investigation, the remote robotics programme is intended to potentially empower an interventional cardiologist at a major centre to robotically control the movement of interventional devices at a remote facility. This could offer patients located in rural areas the high-quality heart care and treatment currently available only at heart centres in major metropolitan areas. According to a press release, the first phase of the programme aims to understand what is required to make remote robotics successful. The development of the programme will proceed based on those findings.
“We are excited to support the first phase of this effort to develop a highly innovative technology with great potential for improving access to care in rural areas,” says Walter Panzirer of The Leona M and Harry B Helmsley Charitable Trust. “Our vision is to provide access to care to populations that generally lack the necessary infrastructure. Enabling a critical service, such as angioplasty, utilising remote robotics can dramatically improve outcomes for a larger population.”
With funding from The Leona M and Harry B Helmsley Charitable Trust, Corindus and Sanford Health will pursue the possibilities offered by pioneering new, remote capabilities for robotic-assisted percutaneous coronary intervention, also known as angioplasty.
The remote robotics programme is intended to extend the capability of CorPath to not just perform angioplasty in the same cath lab, but in labs hundreds of miles away.
