Maestro, Moon Surgical's rising star

Moon Surgical's Maestro has initial FDA approval and its CE Mark, a clear go-to-market strategy with a "democratic" business model centered on accessibility — and enough financing to begin planning its own manufacturing system. What more could a robotic surgery assistant need?

In a wide-ranging interview with Barnaby Pickering of Medtech Insight, Anne Osdoit, CEO of Paris-based Moon Surgical and Partner at Sofinnova MD Start, explained the company's strategy for the robotic assisted surgery (RAS) platform and outlined the next stepson the road to full commercialization.

Maestro was designed to assist surgeons performing laparoscopic surgery, essentially providing a spare pair of arms they can position intuitively with tactile feedback to hold surgical tools inside the patient.

"People view Maestro as a platform that could be used in multiple rooms in one facility to provide some of the benefits of robotic surgery to more surgeons and patients," Osdoit told Pickering.

Because Maestro is much less expensive than complex robotic surgery systems like Intuitive's da Vinci, it should be ideal for ambulatory surgical centers (ASCs), the increasingly popular small medical facilities where patients can undergo a minimally invasive procedure and return home without having to stay the night.

Osdoit explained that Moon was targeting the U.S. market first, where its likely competitors are CMR Surgical’s Versius and Medtronic’s Hugo modular systems, which don't yet have approval from the Food and Drug Administration.

Moon is installing Maestro in several pilot locations in the U.S. and Europe in an effort to fully understand how the system will be adopted, Osdoit explained.

"What does it take to get additional users onboarded and trained? How does Maestro impact scheduling of procedures? How do we know its reliability? What does it take to service it?" she said. "These are all things we need to test live and it’s important we do it in an environment that is representative to the real world.”

She said Moon was leaning toward a subscription-based model for Maestro, with hospitals paying $20,000-$30,000 per month for Maestro, including automated reordering of consumables like sterile drapes. One of the many advantages of the subscription model is that improved versions can be swapped in on demand.

Like any good surgeon's assistant, Maestro will improve with every operation.

Cameras will help Moon Surgical learn how different teams use the system, and surgeons will be able to use this information to set up the system for a given procedure.

The key going forward? “For Maestro to succeed, we must do everything possible to make it fit into clinical workflows," Osdoit said. "We have a great product, a great team and the expertise required."

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