Three Medtech Firms to Leverage NVIDIA’s Isaac for Healthcare Robotics Tech

Neptune Medical, Virtual Incision Corporation, and XCath are harnessing NVIDIA’s robotics expertise to enhance or develop their own systems. The trio recently announced respective collaborations with NVIDIA to tap into the firm’s Isaac for Healthcare, an artificial intelligence (AI) robot development platform comprising libraries, application frameworks, and AI models designed to accelerate the development of AI robots such as autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), arms and manipulators, and humanoids.

Neptune Medical is expanding its collaboration with NVIDIA to further advance its GI Robotic System. The deeper engagement aligns with NVIDIA’s focus on physical AI—a transformative wave of artificial intelligence that enables autonomous medical devices to sense, plan, and execute complex tasks in real-world environments. By integrating Isaac for Healthcare, Neptune Medical gains access to an advanced digital twin framework, enabling physically accurate and high-fidelity simulations of sensors, human anatomy, and physiological processes essential for medical innovation.

“Building the next generation of intelligent GI robotics requires robust AI-driven simulation,” Neptune Medical Founder/CEO Alex Tilson said. “By utilizing NVIDIA Isaac for Healthcare, we can accelerate the development, validation, and commercialization of our GI robotic systems with highly enabling capabilities, ensuring that they operate with unparalleled precision and safety in real-world settings.”

XCath is planning to incorporate AI-driven simulation powered by NVIDIA Isaac for Healthcare into its autonomous robotic system. The new, advanced capabilities position XCath’s platform to deliver the highest standard of care for stroke and other complex vascular conditions to patients globally.

“One in four adults over the age of 25 will have a stroke during their lifetime, yet fewer than 5% have access to proper medical intervention,” XCath CEO Eduardo Fonseca stated. “Through our collaboration with NVIDIA, we aim to democratize the gold standard in stroke care—mechanical thrombectomy—and make this life-saving therapy accessible to more patients worldwide.”

XCath is leveraging Isaac for Healthcare to create comprehensive digital twins of its endovascular robot, treatment devices, and human vasculature. By doing so, XCath can accelerate prototyping and testing cycles for future robotic generations, create virtual training environments for surgeons and medical trainees, and build patient-specific procedural plans. Using pre-procedural imaging allows surgeons to virtually rehearse complex procedures, such as aneurysm repair, on a patient’s exact anatomy.

“XCath is embracing the next wave of AI in surgical robotics that enables autonomous medical devices to sense, plan, and perform complex actions in the real world,” said Director David Niewolny, director of Business Development for medtech at NVIDIA. “With the benefit of Isaac for Healthcare, XCath’s robotics platform has transformative operational capabilities that can dramatically impact patient care.”

The virtual twin infrastructure provided by NVIDIA Isaac for Healthcare also serves as a training ground for developing autonomously navigating AI systems. These systems will provide real-time, intraoperative feedback and can pause procedures when detecting unexpected deviations. They function as a robust safety mechanism through a parallel autonomous system and mitigate risks from network fluctuations or potential security threats.

“Integrating Isaac for Healthcare into our development pipeline represents a quantum leap for XCath’s capabilities,” said James Tudor, M.D., vice president of Artificial Intelligence at XCath. “This platform allows us to simulate thousands of surgical scenarios in the time it would take to run a single physical test, massively accelerating our AI training and robotic development cycles. The digital twin environment enables us to perfect autonomous navigation systems in a risk-free setting before deployment, compressing years of development into months. Isaac for Healthcare empowers us to transform development velocity into life-changing patient outcomes, dramatically accelerating our mission to democratize mechanical thrombectomy and reduce stroke’s devastating global impact.”

The World Stroke Organization estimates the condition will cost the global economy over $1 trillion by the year 2030 and says the incidence of strokes has increased significantly in the last two decades. XCath’s Endovascular Robotic System is being developed to improve intracranial procedure accuracy and to improve access to mechanical thrombectomy, the most effective treatment for acute stroke, by connecting patients in remote and underserved areas with care teams at the world’s top institutions.

Last year, Vitor Mendes Pereira, M.D., successfully performed a first-of-its-kind telerobotic procedure demonstration between a control station in Abu Dhabi and a simulated remote patient in South Korea. The mechanical thrombectomy marked a critical milestone in the development of telerobotic intervention. It also showed the feasibility of a hub-and-spoke model, where a physician in a “hub” location can operate on patients at various “spoke” locations worldwide.

Founded in 2017, XCath is developing revolutionary medical robotics. It boasts strategically located campuses in Houston, Texas—home to the world’s largest medical center—and Pangyo, South Korea, often referred to as the Silicon Valley of Korea. The XCath endovascular robotic system is currently under development. It is not yet cleared for commercial distribution in any country.

Virtual Incision Corporation is exploring the use of NVIDIA Isaac for Healthcare to develop next-generation surgical robotics platforms. Digital twin framework capabilities integrated with robotic learning tools will enable Virtual Incision’s developers to create highly realistic virtual environments to simulate surgical details and physiologic processes. Virtual Incision also continues to explore the NVIDIA Cosmos platform for future surgical robots development. The goal is to accelerate the product development cycle by leveraging comprehensive testing throughout digital prototyping, simulation and physical deployment.

“Developing a surgical robot is a rigorous process, and great care must be taken to ensure that the product is safe, smart and effective,” Virtual Incision CEO John Murphy stated. “As we work on future iterations of MIRA, we’re excited to use NVIDIA Isaac for Healthcare to bring our surgeons and patients the most advanced technologies safely and expeditiously.”

MIRA is branded as the world’s first miniaturized robotic-assisted surgery (RAS) system. Its small, sleek form factor is designed to offer the benefits of RAS during colectomy procedures without the logistical inefficiencies of traditional mainframe robotics. The easily accessible device weighs approximately two pounds (less than one kg) and offers internal triangulation with shoulders, arms, and infinite wrist roll inside of the body. It can be used in any operating room—a dedicated mainframe room is unnecessary. With its drape- and dock-free design and portability, MIRA is quick to set up, clean up, and move between cases. Its conveniently accessible design positions it to be used as a standalone system or a complementary tool for facilities that already own a mainframe. With MIRA, every operating room is RAS-ready.

Virtual Incision aims to simplify robotic-assisted surgery (RAS) so more patients and their surgeons can access its benefits. Headquartered in Lincoln, Neb., and holding more than 200 and patent applications, the company developed MIRA, the first-of-its-kind miniature RAS system.