J&J Bets Big in Robotic Surgery (OrthoFeed)
J&J’s recent blockbuster deal for Auris is really just the latest in a series of moves the diversified market giant has made in positioning itself in the exploding field of robotically-enabled surgery. From Verb, its joint venture with Verily, to Orthotaxy to, now, Auris, J&J is developing and advancing what the company calls “a comprehensive digital surgery experience.”
The announcement this past February that Johnson & Johnson had acquired robotic start-up Auris, founded by Fred Moll, a pioneer in the field, came as an almost audible blast in the medtech industry. It’s not entirely clear whether the noise was caused by fireworks over the $3.4 billion price tag or by a resounding affirmation of the importance of robotically-enabled surgery broadly speaking. But it seems as if few people in the medtech industry haven’t spent the last several months talking about the deal.
And with good reason. As we’ve noted in other contexts, robotics is today arguably the hottest of all technology spaces in medtech and perhaps the most chameleon-like. New surgical robotics start-ups seem to launch every month, and not just in the US, but...
