Imperial College London and medical technology company Smith+Nephew have launched a five-year partnership to deliver advances in robotic surgery for musculoskeletal conditions.

The partnership will bring together experts from Imperial with engineers from Smith+Nephew to accelerate the translation of academic breakthroughs in fields such as computer vision and sensing into advanced techniques in robotic surgery.

These techniques will be designed to make robotic surgery less invasive, more intuitive and usable by more than just the specialist centres. It is hoped this will lead to better patient outcomes.

A new centre has been launched where this research will take place.

The new centre will be led Professor Ferdinando Rodriguez y Baena in Imperial’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, co-director of the Hamlyn Centre, whose group works on robotics for orthopaedic surgery. Once fully operation, it will support a senior postdoctoral researcher and up to seven fully-funded PhD studentships.

Professor Ferdinando Rodriguez y Baena from Imperial College London said: “Translational research on health devices has historically had two main routes to patients: licensing or spinout companies. This centre establishes a third: academic engineers working hand-in-hand to help develop products with a major industry partner. There is no doubt that the innovations discovered within this centre will hold major impact for the medical technology industry as a whole and its patients.”

Professor Mary Ryan, Vice-Provost (Research and Enterprise) at Imperial College London, said, “Working directly with Smith+Nephew, will allow us to bring advanced innovations rapidly to the clinic, drawing on Imperial’s world-leading academic expertise and the company’s resources and sectoral knowledge. We look forward to further expanding our large-scale partnerships with industry in this space and bringing innovations in medical technology to patients more quickly.”