Smith+Nephew & leading HealthTech – Proximie – partner to deliver advanced robotics surgery training

Two British healthcare companies united: rolling out Smith+Nephew’s orthopaedics, robotics & sports medicine solutions. Partnership launched in the UK, Ireland and NORDICS.

Proximie, the global health technology platform digitally connecting operating rooms, announces a pilot partnership with Smith+Nephew.

The partnership – which is running in select centres in the UK, Ireland and NORDICS – enables more surgeons to be trained to carry out procedures, and contribute towards improved patient outcomes.

Surgeons such as Mr Simon Jennings are using Proximie to demonstrate Smith+Nephew’s next-generation handheld robotics platform, the CORI™ Surgical System. The Proximie solution can be used to record surgery, which allows Mr Jennings’ fellow surgeons to review and learn from the procedure. By sharing knowledge and expertise, patient outcomes for similar surgeries can be improved while reducing the need for in-person training to use the CORI system.

A recent patient of Mr Jennings, Peter Hatcher, underwent robotic orthopaedic surgery for a partial knee arthroplasty with CORI. Performed at Spire Bushey Hospital in London, UK, the use of CORI may reduce post-surgery recovery time.^2,3 CORI digitally augments the surgeon’s ability to measure, plan and perform knee surgery – individualised to the patient’s anatomy – potentially improving outcomes in total and partial knee arthroplasty. ^4,5

Mr Hatcher noted that: “A knee replacement is an intimidating surgery to have, given the inevitable effect on your day-to-day life and long recovery period. I definitely felt much safer with the process being recorded, while the added prospects of significantly reduced recovery time, and aiding future surgeries, are reassuring and inspiring.”

Proximie has also started work at the Smith+Nephew’s Academy London in Watford, Hertfordshire – the first commercial surgical training facility in Europe to be accredited by the Royal College of Surgeons.

Within the Smith+Nephew Academy London biolabs, the Proximie solution allows experts to educate up to 50 surgeons at a time to use advanced techniques across orthopaedics, robotics and sports medicine categories, even when surgeons are unable to physically visit the Academy.

Dr. Nadine Hachach-Haram, CEO and Founder of Proximie, said:

“We are delighted to announce our partnership with an iconic name such as Smith+Nephew. Our two companies are aligned in our goal to increase access to surgical care, and this partnership has great potential to improve and increase the speed of training for complex, robotic surgical techniques.

“Via our platform, the benefits of Smith+Nephew’s devices can be trained out to more surgeons and accessed more broadly by patients. That improves patients’ choice of care and long-term outcomes. Given

the pressures and backlogs within health systems in the UK and globally – Smith+Nephew and Proximie are perfect allies at the perfect time.”

Simon Tarry, Managing Director for UKI and Nordics at Smith+Nephew, commented:

“Our purpose at Smith+Nephew is to support healthcare professionals to return their patients to health and mobility, so they can live their ‘Life Unlimited’. I am delighted that we can collaborate with Proximie and our customers to scale world class professional education in support of the safe and effective use of our technologies, connecting an educational network globally using the Proximie healthcare platform alongside our Smith+Nephew Academies, and enabling proctorship and expertise to improve patient outcomes directly when needed most and in the most effective setting. Smith+Nephew is committed to improving outcomes for patients and productivity during the unprecedented challenges faced by our NHS around capacity, workforce and the elective backlog, and I am certain this innovative alliance can support our shared goals.”

Recent research by Capita Healthcare Decisions – ‘Backlog in Elective Surgery’^[1] – shows the scale of the challenge, and the need for digital solutions to improve access to care, reduce backlogs and solve broader healthcare challenges. Using waiting lists for knee replacements as an example, the research revealed that even if the NHS – overall – improved productivity in line with its single best performing Trust – the current waiting list would take 11 months to clear. If productivity was merely in line with the NHS’s best quartile – the waiting list would take 104 months to clear. With no change in overall productivity, the waiting list would never clear.

Key features of the Proximie solution include: four low latency HD camera views, annotation and augmented reality tools, audio-visual communication systems, hardware agnostic installation and usage, and a video library of previous surgeries used for educational reviews.