The First Made In India Surgical Robot, SSI Mantra Set To Revolutionise Robotic Surgeries
Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute and Research Centre, New Delhi (RGCI) have installed the first-ever Made-in-India Surgical Robotic System, SSI-Mantra, devised by an Indian med-tech start-up SS Innovations. The indigenous SSI Mantra is set to signify the beginning of a new era of surgical procedures in India, making robotic surgery accessible and affordable for the people of the country. The cutting-edge SSI Mantra which took only five years to build is modular, flexible, and versatile in comparison to leading global surgical systems, which dominated the surgical robotics market with a monopoly to date.
India at present has close to 100 surgical robotic systems, which falls way below the demand for robotic surgeries in India, medical experts believe patients are not able to benefit from the technology as accessibility and affordability of the technology have been the foe for the patients for a very long time.
The costs of robotic surgeries are very high around the world and are the only downside that is associated with robotic surgeries as many patients stay out of its gamut and cannot afford the expensive procedures.
In India, a robotic assisted procedure costs anywhere between Rs 5-6 lakhs rupees to a patient and the cost of one surgical robotic system to the hospital is around Rs 7-8 crores excluding the running costs which is around Rs 2.4 crore a year. But with the arrival of the homemade SSI Mantra, patients will now avail the same procedures starting with only Rs 40000, and the cost of one surgical robotic system is pegged at Rs 4.5 crore excluding the running costs for the hospitals which are free for the first three years and then are capped at Rs 50 lakhs per year.
SS Innovations has become the first company in South Asia and third company globally to launch the epoch-making machine, a technologically advanced surgical robotic system that has more and better features and applications than existing Surgical Robotic Systems and is much less expensive.
“Based on the benefits I have seen in Robotic Surgery patients and observing very poor availability of Surgical Robotic Systems in India and many other developing economies, I made it my mission to develop a new Surgical Robotic System that would offer better and more advanced technology features, applicable in most specialties including Cardiac Surgery and be cost-effective. We at SSI were able to achieve this vision with the help of some very talented engineers from India and highly experienced global scientists,” stated Dr Sudhir P Srivastava, Founder, Chairman & CEO, SS Innovations.
The highlight of the new advancement made by SS Innovations remains the affordability of the technology that they have marshalled without compromising on the quality, which has now changed the game of the surgical robotic market which was earlier capitalised by Da Vinci Surgical Robotic Systems made by the American Company Intuitive Surgical.
“We are making 26 drives out of the 40 drives in our robotic systems, we are not importing them from china or any other country, and over the course of five years we have saved over 50 million dollars from making our own drives, another aspect is manufacturing costs are quite lower here in India and the country has the infrastructure to support the indigenous manufacturing as a lot of the raw materials are available for the technology at competitive price which has helped us to make the Surgical Robotic Systems affordable,” stated Vishwajyoti Srivastava, President and Chief Operating Officer, SS Innovations while speaking with BW BusinessWorld.
With hospital industry marques like Apollo and Manipal already on the table, other big hospitals like TATA, Medanta are also placing their orders with SS Innovations to get the homemade robotic technology onboard.
“Presently we have 5 orders from across the country, the next system will be going to Raipur, then Hyderabad and then two systems will also be going to Mumbai, and we are constantly receiving the orders from all over the country, and it's open for all at the moment. The surgeons are all convinced but the only seed of doubt that the surgeons currently have is they want to see the live procedures, and for that Dr Sudhir Rawal has graciously opened up his OT for visiting doctors to see the procedures. We have been approached by TATA Cancer Group in Varanasi, Hospitals and Nursing homes in Patna and Lucknow among others so a great amount of interest is also being seen from the tier 2 cities,” said Mr Srivastava.
After two pilot projects where Dr Sudhir Rawal and his team from RGCI successfully performed a total of 26 surgeries with the SSI Mantra, thereby validating safety, feasibility, and effectiveness, the robot is now ready to provide an advanced method of surgery, which will be accessible to the general public at a much lower cost.
“I have used the SSI Mantra System on many of my patients. In its present form, the performance is quite good, and I could use the System for many very complex operations. Many more patients in India and around the world will benefit from this technology based on quality and cost-effectiveness,” stated Dr Rawal.
Another crucial aspect of robotic surgeries is the medical training of the medical professionals for performing robotic surgeries, Dr Arun Prasad, Bariatric and Robotic Surgeon, Apollo Hospitals explained that good training is the most important part of a robotic procedure as it leads to less problems, one needs to learn and get proficient before performing the surgeries as one handles very complex set of equipment's, and lack of training could lead to the loss of life but once you are trained on the technology then it becomes like any other procedure.
“To learn the robotic assisted surgeries, for fresh surgeons the current training path is around one year, and for surgeons who are already practising procedures but want to learn different procedures, for instance a urology cancer surgeon wants to perform a uterus cancer surgery then it roughly takes around three months, but it only takes three to four weeks for established senior surgeon to switch to robotic surgery usually, and this is the shortest time span for training as the laparoscopic surgeries take 3 years to train the new surgeons and established surgeons have to do 100 cases which roughly takes around a year, to get proficient in robotic surgeries surgeons only have to perform 6-7 surgeries,” Dr Somashekar SP Chairman & HOD, Surgical Oncology, Manipal Comprehensive Cancer Care Centre.
Dr Somashekar further explained that the instrument training is the commitment of the company who provides the robot, but the main training of the robotic surgeries is provided by training centres in India accredited by the National Medical Council, Diplomate National Board and the Universities,” there are about 10000 training centres for various procedures, robotic surgery is one of the procedure and currently there are about 10-15 accredited robotic training centres, but with current demand the training centres will go up in coming years” he added.
