Johnson & Johnson Establishes ‘Verb Surgical Inc’ in Collaboration with Google

Johnson & Johnson recently announced that it has joined hand with Google to form a new independent company. The new company will aim to make robotic-assisted systems that could be used for surgery.

The announcement about the formation of the new company, Verb Surgical Inc., was made on Thursday by Johnson & Johnson. The tools developed in the company will reduce costs in order to help improve the standard of healthcare.

Google’s research unit which was earlier known as Google Life Sciences was changed to Verily Life Sciences LLC, after the announcement of its collaboration with J&J in March.

The presently available system robotic systems used across the world are very large in size, almost the size of a compact car. In order to use these systems, a surgeon has to sit at a control panel about 10 feet from the patient to carry out the procedure, according to Gary Pruden, global chairman of J&J’s medical devices group.

He also said that robots developed by Verb will be almost 20% the size of the presently available tools. This will allow surgeons to operate much closer to the patient. Pruden also mentioned that the new tools will reduce the cost, considering that now robotic systems can cost about $2 million or even more.

The point that will make Verb’s technology more competitive is that it will be designed for a large number of operations, such as thoracic surgery, colorectal surgery and bariatric weight loss procedure, as stated by J&J.