Revolutionizing orthopedic surgery with robotics: Meet the VELYS™ digital surgery team

What if surgical procedures could be guided not only by the training and experience of individual surgeons, but also the accumulated knowledge and recognized best practices of their peers? And what if that guidance could be highly personalized, too, factoring in, for example, the unique anatomy of each patient?

These aren’t hypothetical questions—they’re exactly what the extraordinary team behind our latest surgical robotics innovation are bringing to life right now. Find out:

• How data is actively transforming surgery to drive better patient outcomes
• What it takes to go to market in the field of orthopedic surgical robotics
• What Johnson & Johnson and startups share in common (and what they do not)
• How you can apply your digital skill set to change the future of health today

Data and surgical robotics: Transformational impact

Over three million people undergo knee-replacement surgeries each year worldwide. The procedure, known as total knee arthroplasty (TKA), involves resurfacing parts of the damaged knee with artificial components, called implants.

Doing that isn’t simple, obviously—the knee joint alone consists of three separate bones, for starters. What’s more, the surgeons who perform the procedure have a lot of latitude in terms of how they choose to position the implant, and there’s a high degree of variability from one surgeon to the next.

To understand the transformative role of data in this context, Miranda Jamieson, Senior Director, VELYS™ Robotics and AR, suggested an analogy with the satellite-navigation app Waze.

“What does Waze do? It gets you to your destination as efficiently as possible while avoiding complications or obstacles, and if you make a divergent decision, it automatically adjusts and provides you with real-time feedback,” she said. “That’s essentially what we’re doing, only we’re doing it with robotics and data to improve patient outcomes in the operating room.”

Because the VELYS™ Robotic-Assisted Solution leverages data unique to each patient’s anatomy, it also makes for more personalized knee replacements, which may lead to better patient outcomes in turn.

François Urvoy, Senior Marketing Manager – Robotics & Digital Surgery, elaborated: “Instead of having the surgery depend on the individual preferences of the surgeon, we can empower that surgeon with data from the experiences of thousands of surgeons and thousands of patients. That way, the surgeon can make decisions based not just on the specific knowledge or training they have, but on what all of their colleagues have seen.”

Think: insights that enable surgeons to better visualize and predict joint stability, or tools to help them personalize alignment and balance relative to soft tissues.

“It’s really mind blowing when you see these things come to life,” François said.

How we’re fast-tracking innovation

How quickly can you bring a robotic-assisted surgical solution to market for what is one of the most commonly performed procedures in orthopedics today?

Pretty fast, François said. “We launched our first robotic device in 2021, and we built it entirely from scratch—even the hardware, for example, was built in house. I was part of those development efforts from the very beginning.”

All told, the robotic-assisted solution went from acquisition to market in less than three years.

Since then, its impact has been nothing short of “breathtaking,” according to Nicolas Demanget, Ph.D., Senior Manager, Orthopedic Front-End Robotics R&D. In the last two years alone, in fact, there have been over 10,000 procedures utilizing the VELYS™ robotic-assisted solution worldwide.

“We’re laser-focused on innovative projects and coming up with new ideas every day,” Nicolas said. “We’re also able to develop proofs of concept and prototypes very quickly, and those prototypes can be shown to surgeons, which allows us to gather feedback and rapidly iterate from there.”

What else has made the success of the VELYS™ Digital Surgery team possible?

Massive cross-functional collaboration, for one. Nicolas recalls initiating the development process with “something like 10 employees.” One year later, his teammates numbered north of 300.

The speed of a startup, the resources of Johnson & Johnson

If the VELYS™ Digital Surgery team seems to be moving at the speed of a startup, it may be because that’s where so many team members came from.

Claire Baegert, a key contributor on the software side of things for VELYS™ Robotic-Assisted Solution, is a case in point.

“My background is in the world of startups, yet it’s amazing to me how much I’ve been able to achieve with Johnson & Johnson in such a relatively short period of time,” she said. “I also have access to resources and tools that I didn’t have in the past, and that makes software development faster and easier. The other thing is that, despite the size of this company, my work feels very significant. You, as an individual, can make a difference here.”

Claire continued, “We’re doing things that I would not have even imagined or thought possible before.”

Nicolas shared a similar perspective.

“Working for a startup was my only professional experience after receiving my Ph.D., so I think I was fairly naive about what it meant to navigate in such a large company,” he said. “I didn’t understand all of the opportunities that it would create in terms of making an impact.”