Industry analysts estimate that robots account for 2% of surgical procedures worldwide. In the general surgery realm, approximately 10% of procedures in the US leverage robotics, compared to less than 1% outside the country. In other words, there is certainly significant room for further growth in the market, writes John McCamant, special to MoneyShow.
Combined, the US, Europe, and Japan account for 87% of installed surgical robotic systems in the world, which leaves over six billion people without access to the many benefits of robotic surgery.
India is a great growth opportunity. It has a population of ~1.4 billion, but accounts for just 1% of robotic surgical systems installed. More specifically, India has approximately 70,000 hospitals with a total of 1.9 million beds and 541 medical colleges to train and teach new robo docs. Currently, India only has 140 surgical robotic machines with only 70-75 of the 70,000 total hospitals actually having installed robotic surgery units.
As for competition, Intuitive Surgical (ISRG) with a market cap of $115 billion has a whopping 85% market share of the robotic surgery space. The medical device behemoth presently has 7,800 Da Vinci robotic systems in operation and the machines have performed 8.5 million procedures worldwide to date.
North America and Europe currently hold the major portion (87%) of the global robotic surgery market. As for cost, the SSi Mantra system comes in at approximately $600K versus ISRG’s Da Vinci at $1.2-$2.5 million per system. SSi’s cost per procedure is $400-700, compared to $700-$3,500 for the Da Vinci.
ISRG’s lack of focus on the developing world has left a significant opportunity for a company like SSII with a better and less expensive robotic surgery system to dominate the almost 90% currently underserved by ISRG. Overall, the robotic surgery system market is growing substantially as it rebounds from the COVID sales slump.
To that point, ISRG just reported Q1 2023 financials. It showed a 13% annual growth in Da Vinici sales along with a 13% surge in machine usage as more and more surgeries are performed with robotic assistance.
Disclosure: SSII is a paid advertiser of MoneyShow.
