Healthcare, Business Organizations Partner on Remote Robotics Program

Corindus Vascular Robotics, a developer of precision vascular robotics and provider of the CorPath Vascular Robotic System, has  partnered with Sanford Health and The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust to launch a feasibility investigation for a remote robotics program.

Following the feasibility investigation, the remote robotics program is intended to potentially empower an interventional cardiologist at a major center to robotically control the movement of interventional devices at a remote facility. Such a feat could offer patients located in rural areas the high-quality heart care and treatment currently available only at heart centers in major metropolitan areas. For many patients living in rural areas, a procedure as critical and life-saving as an angioplasty is only available at a facility more than 200 miles away.

The project’s first phase will assess the requirements for a successful robotics program. Organizers then will base the program on those findings.

“We are excited to support the first phase of this effort to develop a highly innovative technology with great potential for improving access to care in rural areas,” said Walter Panzirer of The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust. “Our vision is to provide access to care to populations that generally lack the necessary infrastructure. Enabling a critical service, such as angioplasty, utilizing remote robotics can dramatically improve outcomes for a larger population.”

Sanford Health recently became a CorPath Center of Excellence, having installed its second CorPath System in the Sanford Heart Hospital in Sioux Falls, S.D., and the third CorPath in the Sanford Health system at the Sanford Aberdeen Medical Center in Aberdeen, S.D. With funding from The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, Corindus and Sanford Health will pursue the possibilities offered by pioneering new, remote capabilities for robotic-assisted percutaneous coronary intervention, also known as angioplasty.

“In the past year, we have installed the third CorPath system in our organization and built a strong partnership with Corindus as a CorPath Center of Excellence,” said Tom Stys, M.D., director of Cardiovascular Services at Sanford Heart Hospital. “Robotic assistance is a tool for physicians to provide optimal care to our patients. The vision of remote opportunities for angioplasty and stent placement is a stepping stone to help us extend that care to the most rural parts of our state and beyond.”

CorPath is a U.S. Food and Drug Administration-cleared technology that enables precise, robotic-assisted angioplasties to open arteries and restore blood flow in patients with coronary artery disease. The system enables precisely controlled, robotic-assisted angioplasties while the physician is seated in a lead-lined interventional cockpit protected from radiation exposure. CorPath allows the cardiologist to advance stents and guidewires millimeter-by-millimeter using joysticks and touchscreen controls. The remote robotics program is intended to extend the capability of CorPath to not just perform angioplasty in the same cath lab, but in labs hundreds of miles away.

“Forming the multi-disciplinary skills necessary to design and develop a product of this complexity is no small undertaking,” said David Handler, CEO of Corindus. “But when pairing our technology leadership with the in-depth clinical knowledge from Sanford Health, we will work to deliver groundbreaking advances for heart care in rural health and pave a new way for robotics to benefit patients. The implications for remote robotics are vast and, with this partnership, we are taking the first step toward achieving those possibilities.”

Based in Waltham, Mass., Corindus Vascular Robotics develops robotic-assisted percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI) systems. The company stands behind its technology with a “One Stent Promise,” offering a $1,000 credit to hospitals that use two or more stents per lesion in PCI procedures performed with the CorPath System.

Sanford Health, an integrated health system headquartered in the Dakotas, is the nation’s largest, rural, not-for-profit healthcare system with locations in 126 communities in nine states. In addition, Sanford Health is developing international clinics in Ghana, Israel, Mexico and China. Sanford Health includes 39 hospitals, 140 clinic locations and 1,360 physicians in 81 specialty areas of medicine.

The Helmsley Charitable Trust aspires to improve lives by supporting effective nonprofits in a various areas. Since 2008, when the Trust began its active grantmaking, it has committed more than $1 billion to a wide range of charitable organizations. The Trust’s Rural Healthcare Program funds innovative projects that use information technologies to connect rural patients to specialty and emergency medical care, bring the latest medical therapies to patients in remote areas, and provide state-of-the-art training for rural hospitals and EMS personnel. To date, this program has awarded more than $200 million to organizations and initiatives in the upper Midwest states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Minnesota, Iowa, and Montana.