The Need
Consumer, physician and healthcare trends indicate a clear need for an increased focus on, and investment in, minimally invasive surgery.
The Internet is allowing patients to research and demand specific treatment options. On the other end of the spectrum, there is a prevalent lack of awareness in multiple and newer approaches to surgical interventions available to patients.
Lastly, insurers and provider organizations demand high-quality providers who demonstrate improved health care outcomes at competitive prices (currently US medical costs are growing at an 8%-9% annual rate or approximately three times the GDP). Ambulatory surgery centers providing outpatient MIS procedures are successfully competing with hospitals providing inpatient, highly invasive surgical procedures. At the same time, 60% of 789,000 hysterectomies performed in the US in 2003 could have been performed using MIS procedures, but only 23% were performed using MIS.