Intuitive buys IT startup for surgical video sharing, archiving, analysis

Dive Brief:

Intuitive Surgical disclosed Monday it acquired Israel-based health IT startup Orpheus Medical.
Intuitive said Orpheus' technologies allow users to "capture and share clinical video and imaging from many sources, which may help improve physician and OR care team workflow and enable analysis of their interventions."
Financial terms of the deal were not shared. Intuitive said Orpheus will be a wholly owned subsidiary.

Dive Insight:

While Intuitive has long enjoyed its first mover status in the robotic surgery market, well-resourced medical device companies like Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic are closing in on market clearances in the next few years that will introduce competition.

One way that Intuitive appears to be differentiating its products is through adding informatics tools from Orpheus that may bolster and ease a healthcare team's robotic surgery experience before, during and after a procedure. The 10-year-old company's clinical video management and analytics platforms are meant to help hospitals with information connectivity, processing and archiving of surgical images and videos across procedure types.

Orpheus' technologies can record and broadcast from a da Vinci robot, enable teleconferencing, and store and share that content with a hospital's electronic medical record and picture archiving and communication system and vendor neutral archive, according to Orpheus' website.

The tech can also be used in cases of laparoscopic surgery, plastic surgery, and ophthalmology and dermatology procedures, as well as for pre-procedure documentation, mid-procedure complication analysis, daily peer review, and daily peer review.

It's the first acquisition Intuitive has publicly announced since it made a deal to buy Schölly Fiberoptic’s robotic endoscope business last July.

Separately, Intuitive last week announced the forthcoming retirement of board chair Lonnie Smith, who has served as chair since becoming CEO of Intuitive in 1997. He is set to be succeeded in April by Intel Corporation's Craig Barratt, a board member since 2011.