Marking Siemens Healthineers’ second robotics partnership this month, the company has signed on to help sell Interventional Systems’ miniature device designed for image-guided and needle-based procedures.
Interventional Systems’ Micromate is about the size of a shoebox and sits above the patient as they lay on the table of a CT or other X-ray machine. It’s designed to control and align off-the-shelf instruments such as biopsy needles or ablation hardware, while clinicians can pilot the robot from safely outside of the radiation field.
Siemens Healthineers aims to broaden the Micromate’s use in angiography suites, by pairing it with its Artis line of C-arm scanners for interventional percutaneous procedures.
“This partnership with Interventional Systems can help speed-up procedures, freeing procedure room time while enhancing quality of care,” Jayant Saha, Siemens Healthineers’ head of global business development for interventional radiology, said in a statement. “We anticipate this collaboration will help clinicians to achieve greater accuracy, perform procedures more quickly and potentially reduce radiation dose to patients and OR staff.”
Earlier this month, Siemens Healthineers said it would work with Stryker to develop a new robotic system aimed at treating strokes and aneurysms within the brain—with the goal of combining the former’s expertise in both imaging and in its Corindus division with the latter’s hardware for neurovascular interventions.