Events
ORKTS Webinar Series | From Bench to Bedside: My Journey of Building a Medical Robotics Company
30 Nov 2021
11:00am-12:00pm
Zoom
Prof. Au, Kwok Wai Samuel
Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering, CUHK
Director, Multiscale Medical Robotic Center, InnoHK
President, Cornerstone Robotics, inc
InnoPort Team, ORKTS (Email: innoport@cuhk.edu.hk | Tel: 3943 3042)
Abstract:
While surgical robotic technology has been widely adopted by surgeons to improve the clinical outcomes, the high cost of getting started is the biggest hurdle to allow the surgical community to take advantage of its full potential, limiting more patients to benefit from robotic surgery.
In Sept 2019, Prof. Au and a few CUHK affiliates started a company, called Cornerstone Robotics (CSR), dedicated to advance surgery and patient care through innovation and technology. CSR aims to develop safe and effective surgical robotic platform to offer robotic surgery at an affordable price, ultimately improving the accessibility of high-end surgical robotic devices. Over the past two years, the company has grown from around 10 people to a 200-people company with three R&D centers established in Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Boston area(USA). Their signature robotic platform, Karakorum surgical system has entered into the pre-clinical stage, targeting for clinical trial in mainland and Hong Kong next year.
In this talk, Prof. Au will take us through his journey from a researcher to an entrepreneur. He will share the unique challenges that he has experienced in building such an interdisciplinary technology team and organization to tackle a highly challenging engineering problem in a highly regulated healthcare industry. In particular, he will discuss the essence of agility and innovation in his organization and how these elements help his organization to flourish despite many regulatory obstacles.
