Gafford, Joshua B. http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5955-5831
Webster, Scott
Dillon, Neal
Blum, Evan
Hendrick, Richard
Maldonado, Fabien
Gillaspie, Erin A.
Rickman, Otis B.
Herrell, S. Duke
Webster, Robert J. III
Funding for this research was provided by:
National Institutes of Health (R41 HL140709)
Article History
Received: 12 February 2019
Accepted: 13 July 2019
First Online: 24 July 2019
Conflict of interest
: The authors have reported to <i>Annals of Biomedical Engineering</i> the following conflicts of interest: The robot concept described in this paper originated in R.W.’s laboratory at Vanderbilt University, and is in the early stages of technology transfer to a startup company, Virtuoso Surgical, Inc., created for purposes of bringing this technology to market, under a Phase I STTR grant from the National Institutes of Health. S.W., N.D., E.B., R.H., D.H. and R.W. are equity holders in Virtuoso. S.W., N.D., E.B. and R.H. are employed by Virtuoso. R.W. and R.H. are founders and board members of Virtuoso, with R.W. serving as president and R.H. serving as Chief Operating Officer. The robot described in this paper is an early-stage prototype, and has not yet begun to go through the FDA approval process. It is not cleared for human use or available for purchase. It will undergo a number of extensive design revisions before becoming a commercial product.
: All experiments were performed by a single interventional pulmonologist (F.M.). We did not recruit a multiple-user cohort for these proof-of-concept experiments. Based on this consideration, and the fact that no patients or live animals were involved in our experiments, prior approval from an ethics committee (IRB or IACUC) was not required.