Titan Medical teams up with Medtronic on robotics

TORONTO – Titan Medical Inc., a medical device company focused on the design and development of single-port robotic surgical technologies, announced that it has entered into a development and license agreement with Medtronic to further the development of robotic assisted surgical technologies. Medtronic will pay up to US $31 million to Titan Medical for the licensing of various Titan technologies.

A steering committee comprised of representatives from Titan and Medtronic will be established to provide oversight regarding the achievement of milestones by Titan. One of the milestones is for Titan to raise an additional US $18 million within four months of the development start date, which is expected to occur in June 2020.

Medtronic has licensed certain robotic assisted surgical technologies from Titan for an upfront payment of US $10 million. Titan retains the rights to continue to develop and commercialize those technologies for its own business.

“These agreements with Medtronic will allow Titan to continue to develop its single-port robotic surgical technologies while sharing our expertise and technologies with Medtronic,” said David McNally, president and CEO of Titan Medical. “We are very excited about the opportunity to continue Titan’s pioneering work to bring new single-port surgical options to the market.”

For its part, Medtronic is attempting to enter the robot-assisted surgery space, which remains dominated by Intuitive Surgical and its da Vinci SP.

Medtronic completed a $1.7 billion purchase of Mazor Robotics in December 2018. A month later, the company launched its Mazor X Stealth robotic-assisted spinal surgical platform in the U.S. In September 2019, Medtronic unveiled its new Hugo system that is set to rival the da Vinci SP.

About Titan
Titan Medical Inc. is focused on robotic-assisted technologies for application in minimally invasive surgery (MIS). Titan is developing a single-port robotic surgical system comprised of a surgeon-controlled patient cart that includes a dual-view camera system with 3D and 2D high-definition vision systems and multi-articulating instruments for performing MIS procedures, and a surgeon workstation that provides an ergonomic interface to the patient cart and a 3D high-definition endoscopic view of the MIS procedure. Titan intends to initially pursue gynecologic surgical indications for use with its single-port robotic surgical system. For more information, visit www.titanmedicalinc.com.