03/26/2026
Through the growing presence of robotic-assisted surgery (RAS), variability is now being shifted from the surgeon’s hand to being concentrated at the instrument-to-tissue interface, where microscopic differences in edge geometry and surface condition directly influence how the tissue responds.
Building on this understanding, surgical robotic systems excel at reproducing identical movements across procedures, surgeons, and care sites. However, they do not compensate for imperfections in the cutting surface itself. Variability at this level compounds as procedure volume increases, as workflows are standardized, and as technologies are deployed across multi-site health systems. Small inconsistencies that may have been manageable in manual surgery become consequential when scaled through platforms.