Throughout a temporary stumble upon with a affected person’s brother, Dr Sudhir Srivastava, a famend heart specialist and the founding father of SS Inventions, skilled a transformative shift in viewpoint referring to his paintings. This stumble upon happened all over a fateful seek advice from to India, which in the end served as a catalyst in his adventure to broaden made-in-India surgical studies.
The case concerned a 22-year-old feminine recognized with an atrial septal defect — a congenital middle situation characterized via a hollow within the septum, the wall that separates the center’s higher chambers (atria).
She was once recognized reasonably past due and was once in a important situation. The health facility was once charging Rs 4 lakh for the surgical procedure, and her brother couldn’t have enough money it. Whilst the physician volunteered to do it at no cost, the health facility didn’t.
“His brother requested for a while and attempted to boost the cash, however sadly, I by no means heard from them once more. To be fair, it nonetheless haunts me,” Dr Sudhir remembers in a dialog with The Higher India.
This incident left him with sleepless nights and a challenge — to broaden an economical machine that may lend a hand other people from each and every background within the nation.
The end result was once the introduction of a surgical robotic known as SSI Mantra. This cutting edge generation assists docs in engaging in complicated surgical procedures with precision and simplicity, lowering prices via one-third in comparison to handbook surgical procedures.
A science corporate with a challenge
Born in Rajasthan, Dr Sudhir moved to america in 1972 for his postgraduate research. He finished his residency in Cardiothoracic Surgical procedure on the College of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.
He practised for some years in Texas sooner than turning into the founding chairman of Alliance Health facility, a centre for heart problems in West Texas, along side 10 different physicians.
“I used to be at all times eager about minimally invasive approaches when it got here to surgical procedures and now not splitting open the sternum. That is the place I were given the risk to accomplish quite a lot of robot surgical procedures and 30 % of the sufferers went house in an afternoon,” he remembers. “Having carried out such a lot of robot surgical procedures, I’d come to India to coach other people in robot surgical procedures. Again then, India didn’t have its personal robot machine.”
In 2002, he carried out his first robot surgical procedure in India. “I stored coming again to the rustic however in 2011, I were given an be offering from a significant health facility to release their robot surgical procedure programme,” he says.
Dr Sudhir says he had at all times longed to be again house, so he jumped on the alternative, packed his baggage, and moved again along with his circle of relatives.
“At the moment, there have been simplest six to seven robot techniques, that too exported, so there weren’t many sufferers that might have enough money to pay the ones two to 3 lakh rupees extra for robot surgical procedure. It was once round this time after I met the 22-year-old affected person’s brother,” he says.
The entire incident made the physician realise that the rustic wishes a machine this is less expensive. “As a result of the excessive prices we can not be offering the most productive remedy to the sufferers, and to scale back the associated fee, we need to broaden it within the nation itself,” he says.
So the physician made a dedication to the reason and made up our minds to position his apply on hang in 2013. “Having executed over 1,400 surgical procedures and with my wisdom of robot surgical procedures, I made up our minds to make use of my existence financial savings of four.5 million bucks,” he says.
“To begin with, I went to Germany to fulfill a few of their scientists for an alternate of generation. On the other hand, it was once now not a luck. Then, I got here again to India and shaped a workforce of 10 engineers and began the improvement out of my house,” he says.
Why robot surgical procedures and the way do they paintings
Dr Sudhir explains why robot surgical procedures are necessary. “Intensity, precision and protection. Those are 3 issues that surmise why we’d like robot surgical procedures. With the assistance of generation, the surgeon will get an in-depth image of the affected person’s portions to be operated on,” he informs.
“The high-end photographs make the surgical procedure extra exact and therefore more secure. The surgeon must fear to be correct with one thing as easy but dangerous as sewing a wound with a beating middle beneath,” he provides.
The physician to start with advanced SSI Mantra, however after some time, he introduced an enhanced model known as SSI Mantra 2. The function of the machine was once to make it user-friendly, ergonomic, and with extra options — each for the surgeons in addition to for the table-side aiding workforce.
“What we have now designed is known as an open-face console, that includes a big 32-inch 4K high-definition solution 3D observe. This design complements magnification, offering surgeons with the aptitude to accomplish procedures with remarkable precision. It’s a outstanding development for surgeries,” he says.
Moreover, he says they’ve built-in security measures with a head-tracking digital camera. “The surgeon wears glasses with explicit markers which can be tracked via the digital camera. This guarantees that if the surgeon seems clear of the observe, even whilst shifting their fingers, the machine won’t reply. It’s a security measure that calls for the digital camera view to be inside sight for operation,” he explains.
The generation additionally has a 23-inch massive observe with all controls simply obtainable to the surgeon. This permits the surgeon to retrieve any of the DICOM photographs from the server, whether or not within the radiology division or in other places within the health facility and show them very easily.
Moreover, the workforce has advanced proprietary generation that permits them to transform those photographs into 3D fashions. Following this, a surgeon or a trainee can manipulate and slice throughout the photographs, necessarily having all of the anatomy of the area you’re working on proper in entrance of them.
“This now not simplest makes the process more secure and quicker but additionally simplifies it via getting rid of guesswork,” he says.
Giving a real-life instance, he says, “Whilst acting a surgical process in South Korea in 2008, a nurse unintentionally inserted a knife all through the center. After I inquired later, she defined that she couldn’t as it should be gauge the intensity.”
To deal with issues like this, SSI Mantra 2 supplies a greater view of the organs as intensity belief is the most important in surgical procedure for bringing in tools and provides, warding off injuries, and shortening the educational curve. Since its release in 2022, the machine has already assisted docs in acting 500 a hit surgical procedures in India.
Speaking about long run plans, Dr Sudhir says, “We’ve advanced a lot of single-arm packages. Our manner comes to smaller and lighter robot fingers, and the function is to broaden several types of fingers that may carry out other purposes.”
He provides, “Our major purpose is to decentralise excellence anywhere conceivable, make the generation less expensive and simple to get admission to in order that we will achieve each and every rural nook of the rustic.”
Calling their manner holistic, he opines that utilising generation is the most important for advancing drugs as of late. In lots of rural spaces, the inhabitants stays underprivileged with regards to getting access to the most productive conceivable hospital treatment, steadily because of physicians’ reluctance to move there for quite a lot of causes.
Their workforce is these days within the means of increasing and editing a truck to house the robot machine in it. The truck would let them behavior camps within the remotest spaces of the rustic, he informs.
Having a look again at his adventure thus far, Dr Sudhir remembers, “There was once a time after I had no cash. Initiatives like those require hundreds of thousands and billions of bucks in funding whilst I used to be there with my meagre financial savings. Regardless of making an attempt to hunt funding from the federal government and personal traders, I struggled to make headway. Resorting to promoting my automotive and furnishings, I injected budget into the undertaking and borrowed cash from buddies in america, so that you could pay off them upon returning to apply if issues didn’t figure out.”
“On the other hand, those demanding situations didn’t deter me. Fueled via a imaginative and prescient, my function was once to create one thing for my nation, making very important healthcare obtainable to all,” he emphasises.
Edited via Pranita Bhat