We heard from Dr. Shane Farritor, Lederer Professor of Engineering UNL on September 23, 2022 at Lincoln South Rotary Club. He titled his presentation "A New Approach to Robotic Surgery from The University of Nebraska".
Dr. Shane Farritor grew up in Broken Bow, Nebraska. His family owned the Coast-to-Coast hardware store and Shane spent a great deal of time there repairing equipment.
Did you ever wonder about the influence of teachers?
One of Shane's teachers saw what he was doing and recognized his talents. She asked if he thought about studying engineering in college. He said he had not - he didn't even know what that was! But, he pursued it. That was a perfect move - he termed it brilliant - that he should be dong nothing else! We learned that teacher - that pointed Shane toward engineering - was our Lincoln South Rotary Club Member Joyce Schmeeckle's sister Judy Strate.
Shane's most recent work is focusing on transportable devices. We met MIRA - The world’s first miniaturized robotic assisted surgery (RAS) platform. The Da Vinci device is currently being used in surgeries. However, that is permanently installed in a specific room.
From https://virtualincision.com/: "Virtual Incision is reimagining robotically-assisted surgery, with simple innovations offering mobility, flexibility, and accessibility to provide minimally invasive options to more patients. The company is developing the MIRA Surgical Platform, a first-of-its-kind miniaturized surgical device, focusing first on colon resection, with follow-on specialty robots for additional potential applications."
The work through his company Virtual Incision is creating transportable devices. The equipment can be installed in any room in a little over 6 minutes. Perhaps the devices might also be the scene of accidents - in the ambulance - and procedures could be performed early rather than the time after transportation to a hospital. Virtual Incision is working on creating specific equipment that attaches to the device for the specific procedure. So, the robot and control center is designed once.
They applied to the FDA to do a clinical trial. It is a highly regulated area and the application was 8000 page. They are now in the middle of a clinical trial as they continue to develop the product. He said that he was working on training a new surgeon today. For training new team members, there is a 9-step training process outlined in the application, including:
- - they perform surgery on a pig
- - they perform surgery on a cadavre
- - they observe Shane's team
- - Shane's team observes their team
They got approved for 30 patients in the trial and they have done 19 so far; 13 of which were done in Lincoln.
Much of the research by Shane's team was initially financed by NASA and the Department of Defense. However, the clinical trial is private venture capital - the investors have purchased shares if Virtual Incision.
BIO:
Dr. Farritor joined the faculty of the Department of Mechanical Engineering in 1998. Prior to coming to UNL he worked in the Field and Space Robotics Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Unmanned Vehicle Lab at the C.S. Draper Laboratories. Dr. Farritor has studied at the Kennedy Space Center, Goddard Space Flight Center and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He is a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and serves on the AIAA Robotics Technical Committee.