Medical robots are taking off, the future is bright!

With the continuous emergence of new technologies, the medical industry is experiencing waves of transformation. The advent and application of medical robots are an important force driving the medical industry to a higher level.

Medical robots can meet specific medical and rehabilitation needs in complex medical application scenarios, effectively improving the quality of medical services and alleviating the problem of insufficient medical resources, thus receiving widespread attention and becoming a current research hotspot in the medical field.

The medical robot market has broad prospects.

In the 1980s, Unimation, an American company, first combined industrial robots with medical surgery, successfully completing a neurosurgical biopsy, marking the official start of medical robot development.

China attaches great importance to the research and development of medical robots. In 2017, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Three-Year Action Plan for Promoting the Development of the Next Generation Artificial Intelligence Industry (2018-2020)", proposing to focus on cultivating intelligent service robots, medical image-assisted diagnostic systems, and other intelligent products. The research and development and application of medical robots meet the needs of major national strategic needs and play a positive role in alleviating the problem of China's aging population and meeting the rapidly growing demand for high-quality medical services.

From the perspective of national scientific and technological development, actively promoting the development of China's medical robot field is of great significance to improving China's scientific and technological level, building a technological innovation highland, and attracting high-end scientific and technological talents. For enterprises, medical robots are currently a popular development field worldwide, with broad market prospects. Focusing on medical robot research and development helps enterprises improve their technological level and market competitiveness. From the patient's perspective, medical robots can provide people with accurate, effective, and personalized medical and health solutions, improving patients' quality of life. The high-quality development of the medical robot industry has multiple meanings.

High market share of rehabilitation robots

In 2014, China ushered in a boom in the application of medical robots. In recent years, China has vigorously supported the medical and artificial intelligence industries, and the medical system has been continuously improved. Under the influence of factors such as technological innovation and accelerated industrialization, the medical robot industry has developed rapidly. It is foreseeable that the focus of the international medical robot market will gradually shift to Asia, and China's medical robot market will attract much attention.

According to relevant information from the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), medical robots can be divided into four categories according to different functions: surgical robots, rehabilitation robots, medical service robots, and medical auxiliary robots. According to incomplete statistics from the Prospective Industry Research Institute, in 2019, the largest segment of China's medical robot market was rehabilitation robots, with a market share of 41%; medical auxiliary robots accounted for 26%; and medical service robots and surgical robots had similar market shares, at 17% and 16%, respectively.

Surgical Robots

Surgical robots integrate a variety of modern high technologies and are known as the crown jewels of the robot industry. Compared with other medical robots, surgical robots have high technical barriers, high precision, and high added value. In recent years, the integration of production, education, and research has been prominent in orthopedic and neurosurgical robots, and a large number of scientific research results have been transformed and applied. Currently, surgical robots have been used in orthopedic, neurosurgical, cardiac surgical, and gynecological surgeries in China.

At present, the minimally invasive surgical robot market in China is dominated by imported robots. The da Vinci surgical robot is one of the most successful minimally invasive surgical robots. It was approved by the US FDA in 2000 and has been the leader in the surgical robot market. In 2006, China introduced its first da Vinci surgical robot. As of 2019, the cumulative installed capacity of da Vinci robots in China was 81 units, completing more than 100,000 clinical surgeries, and the total number of patients treated with the da Vinci surgical system worldwide exceeded 6 million. In addition to soft tissue minimally invasive surgical robots represented by the da Vinci surgical robot, orthopedic surgical robots, neurosurgical robots, interventional robots, and puncture Navigator robots are also attracting attention.

With the continuous development of technology, surgical robots are leading minimally invasive surgery into a new era, and the market is developing rapidly. According to Trend Force data, the global market size of remote-controlled surgical robots was approximately US\$3.8 billion in 2016 and is expected to reach US\$9.3 billion in 2021, with a compound annual growth rate of 19.3%.

Rehabilitation Robots

In recent years, with the continuous development of technologies such as intelligent control, functional rehabilitation and assistive robots have gradually become one of the important technical means of clinical rehabilitation treatment internationally, giving rise to a number of new rehabilitation robot systems.

With the increasing aging trend of the global society and the rapid growth of people's demand for high-quality medical services, the gap in medical service supply is continuously expanding. Currently, rehabilitation robots are the largest category of robot systems in the domestic medical robot market, with a market share far exceeding that of surgical robots, but the technical barriers and costs are lower than those of surgical robots. According to function, they can be mainly divided into exoskeleton robots and rehabilitation training robots.

Human exoskeleton robots integrate advanced technologies such as sensing, control, information, and mobile computing, providing wearables for operators. The robot can independently or assist patients in joint activities and assisted walking. Currently, many exoskeleton robots abroad have obtained FDA certification and have entered the clinical use stage, while China's exoskeleton robot field is still in the early stages of research and development. Domestic companies engaged in exoskeleton research mainly include Dajiang Robot, Fourier Intelligence, and Scream Intelligent Technology.

Rehabilitation training robots are a type of medical robot that assists patients in early entry into motor rehabilitation training, including upper limb rehabilitation robots, lower limb rehabilitation robots, intelligent wheelchairs, and interactive health training robots. The high-end market for domestic rehabilitation training robots is dominated by European and American Brands, with higher Prices. Fourier Intelligence is a domestic company that has pioneered the mass export of rehabilitation training robots to Europe and the United States. Its products have helped patients in hundreds of institutions in more than 20 countries and regions around the world to undergo rehabilitation training (domestic companies participating in the research and development of rehabilitation training robots and their main products are shown in the table).

Medical Service Robots

Compared with surgical robots and rehabilitation robots, medical service robots have relatively lower technical barriers, but they play a very important role in the medical field and have a wide range of applications. For example, remote medical consultation, patient care, hospital disinfection, assisting patients with limited mobility, and delivering laboratory reports. In China, technology companies such as iFLYTEK and Cheetah Mobile are actively exploring and developing intelligent medical service robots.

Medical Auxiliary Robots

Medical auxiliary robots are mainly used to meet the medical care needs of people with limited mobility or loss of motor function. For example, the car e-o-bot-3 robot developed in Germany and the Rober and Resyone robots developed in Japan can complete the work of multiple nursing staff and can also talk to people, providing emotional care for the elderly living alone.

The research and development direction of domestic companion robots is mainly aimed at the children's companionship and early education industry.

Grasping Future Development Trends

Medical robots can assist doctors in diagnosing and treating diseases, reduce manual errors, and improve medical efficiency, thus solving the problem of insufficient medical service supply in China and having good market prospects. Overall, the Chinese medical robot market has great growth potential in the future, driven by both supply and demand.

Current research hotspots in medical robot technology mainly focus on five aspects: robot optimization design, surgical navigation technology, system integration technology, teleoperation and remote surgery technology, and the integration of medical internet big data technology. Specialization, intelligence, miniaturization, integration, and remote operation are future development trends. At the same time, the precision, minimally invasive nature, safety, and stability of robots will continue to improve.

In terms of talent cultivation, the research and development of medical robots involves multidisciplinary knowledge such as medicine, computer science, data science, and biomechanics, and the demand for compound talents with multidisciplinary backgrounds is becoming increasingly urgent. Some universities have added related majors and research platforms. For example, in December 2017, Shanghai Jiao Tong University established the Medical Robotics Institute; in 2018, Tianjin University pioneered the "Intelligent Medical Engineering" major; in 2019, Shanghai University of Technology's newly applied "Rehabilitation Engineering" major was approved, making China the first country in the world to establish a dedicated undergraduate program to cultivate rehabilitation engineering talents. Cultivating high-end talents will be one of the industry's key tasks.

In recent years, the financing enthusiasm in the medical robot industry has remained high. According to statistics, by the end of 2019, there were a total of 112 financing events in the medical robot field. Most financing rounds were concentrated in the pre-A round. Except for a few companies with single financing exceeding 100 million yuan, most medical robot projects had single financing amounts in the tens of millions of yuan, while angel round projects had financing amounts ranging from millions to tens of millions of yuan.

Currently, there are more than 100 medical robot startups in China. Many of these companies are industrial robot or medical device companies extending their industrial layout, and many listed companies such as Fosun Pharma, Boshi shares, and Keyuan shares have also successively entered the medical robot field. Major well-known venture capital institutions such as Zhenge Fund, IDG Capital, Qidi Series Fund, and Genesis Capital have already laid out and accelerated their pace in the medical robot field. The wind of the medical robot industry has arrived and will continue.

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