Daily Archives: November 21, 2021

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According toMordor Intelligence, the U.S. medical robotics market is expected to reach $28.34 billion by 2026. These next-generation systems promise lower costs, less hardware, smaller incisions, more precise treatment, increased levels of guidance and automation.

But big market predictions are often vague on the specifics. Where specifically is the market opportunity for robotically assisted symptoms? What are the challenges manufacturers face in the highly regulated medical tools market? What are the market drivers and technological advancements behind the trends?

I caught up withDarren Porras, Market Development Manager of Medical atReal-Time Innovations(RTI), for a look at what's really happening (and what's coming down the pike) for the medical robotics market.

GN: In what procedures have medical robots become standard? Why those procedures, and what does that say about the earliest iterations of the technology?

Darren Porras:Robotically-assisted systems are increasingly being used today for a broad array of procedures: General Surgeries (e.g. GI, Colorectal), Urological, Gynecological, Neurovascular, Orthopedic (hip/knee implants), and Spinal procedures. These systems provide greater control of surgical instruments and improved visualization to enable more precise and reproducible treatment. For patients, this means less trauma and faster recovery times.

Laparoscopic robotic systems that consist of surgeon-controlled instruments inserted through abdominal ports are the most commercially available systems today to surgically treat a number of cancers, including prostate, bladder, and rectal cancers.

While the initial laparoscopic robotic systems expanded upon the already established minimally-invasive approach for laparoscopic procedures, these systems continue to evolve, and other form factors and device architectures are now in use and emerging. For orthopaedic and spinal procedures, robotic arms and intelligent hand-held devices are assisting surgeons in guiding tools for precise placement and treatments. Flexible robotic systems incorporate steerable catheters, bronchoscopes, and other devices to perform lung biopsies and percutaneous cardiovascular interventions. These systems provide deeper access into internal anatomy and through natural orifices.

GN: Given the market for medical interventions and the evolving technologies, where are the big market opportunities for medical robots, and why is that the case?

Darren Porras:Market opportunity in healthcare is really about how to most effectively and efficiently improve patient care and outcomes. The role of robotics in augmenting surgical tasks during the procedure is only a part of this. The digital transformation in healthcare is redefining how patients are diagnosed, treated, and monitored. This transformation incorporates devices, intelligence, and interoperability of systems and data prior to surgery, during surgery, and for follow-up after surgery. Device manufacturers that develop robotic platforms that integrate holistically and seamlessly with the clinical workflow and leverage data-driven technologies across the device ecosystem will transform minimally invasive surgery.

It's important to note that the majority of surgeries being performed today are not robotic or even minimally invasive. There is a significant opportunity for robotics across all procedure types to improve surgical treatments and patient care. As surgical procedures increasingly utilize data and interoperable intelligent systems to realize clinical efficiencies, assist in decision-making, and automate procedural tasks, robotics will play a key role in meeting the needs of healthcare systems and patients.

GN: Can you speak to some of the challenges manufacturers still face, particularly in areas like system development and issues like safety/reliability, interoperability, and cyber security?

Darren Porras:These systems pose many technical challenges and new computing paradigms. Evolving technologies and increasing complexity presents a steep learning curve to development teams and a lot of risk. With many competitors entering the market and the need to accelerate feature development, companies must focus their teams on what differentiates their products and leverage state of the art technologies, tools, and reusable reference architectures.

Surgical robotics are complex, distributed systems of computing nodes, cameras, sensors, instruments, and other devices that all must work as one integrated system. It's a data connectivity challenge with a number of simultaneous and demanding requirements for reliability, performance, cybersecurity, and interoperability.

Cybersecurity is a big concern. While regulatory bodies, device manufacturers, and hospitals are increasingly collaborating to improve the security of devices and hospital systems, cybersecurity breaches are now a common occurrence. The threat landscape has changed- a couple of teenagers with tools readily available on the internet can launch ransomware attacks and bring down medical devices and vulnerable hospital networks. The consequences of a breach can lead to patient harm, product recalls, and exponential costs to companies that may also include disclosure of trade secrets/IP. Regulatory bodies are raising the bar for approval with updated cybersecurity guidance and increased scrutiny. Device manufacturers must design secure communications into the product at the "white-board" stage across the device ecosystem to secure data components across multi-domain networks while satisfying demanding performance requirements and diverse use cases for system and data access.

These challenges require new software architectures and state-of-the-art, distributed connectivity solutions that enable intelligent, secure, and real-time connectivity across devices, systems, and network domains from the edge to the cloud. Beyond APIs, connectivity frameworks are needed that enable interoperable, reliable, and flexible architectures that are scalable. Device manufacturers can't afford to redesign their systems or update hardware whenever they release new features. Leveraging connectivity frameworks enables development teams to focus on their core competencies and application development- thereby accelerating time to market.

GN: What's on the horizon in terms of capabilities? How will AI and automation play a bigger role going forward?

Darren Porras:Robotic systems will increasingly become 'digital platforms' that leverage data integration and intelligent connectivity across devices to enhance the surgical procedure itself while also being an integral part of a digital surgery ecosystem. By leveraging this interoperability of systems of systems, the power of the convergence of these technologies will truly transform patient care. This requires increasing integration of imaging, visualization, and intelligence through dedicated but increasingly distributed systems and networks.

Device and edge-distributed processing are increasingly important for safety-critical robotics applications where key requirements are latency, reliability, and security. This distributed architecture allows systems to process data locally to execute intelligent device functionality efficiently. Remote-teleoperation is another exciting area where we are already seeing systems capable of performing remote surgeries across 5G networks. These capabilities allow surgeons worldwide to collaborate, enable greater access to expert treatments, and reach remote and underserved populations.

AI algorithms will enhance the sensing capabilities of surgical instrumentation based on physiological parameters and sensor fusion (e.g. blood perfusion, temperature, pressure sensors). AI will also be leveraged to realize increasing levels of surgical precision, autonomous functionality, and consistency of surgical procedures.

Leveraging data, visualization, and intelligence across distributed devices and networks, these systems will provide real-time guidance during the procedure while also assisting in pre-operative surgical planning and post-operative device and procedure optimization. For example, data and metrics collected from the procedure may be used to provide feedback to improve the next surgery and train other surgeons. Clinical teams across the world may leverage this data to collaborate, advance, and standardize surgical treatments. This offers an incredible opportunity to provide universal access to high-quality care and patient outcomes.

GN: What's your sense of the market appetite for medical robots within both the medical and patient communities? Any pushback from healthcare workers? Any reticence among patient populations?

Darren Porras:The high cost of these systems is one key barrier. With new competitors entering the market and as the designs of these systems continue to evolve, it's anticipated that these factors will drive down costs.

Another barrier is the learning curve required by the clinical teams to operate and the difficulty in incorporating these systems into the clinical workflow and hospital ecosystem. Robotically-assisted systems have made great strides in the technical arena- but that's not sufficient to transform surgery. A system may incorporate the most innovative technology. Still, if the technology is inaccessible, whether due to cost factors, insufficiently trained staff, regulatory constraints, or unavailable due to reliability or security issues- this presents a significant hurdle. Device companies need to incorporate best practices in system design and security and evolve functionality quickly to meet the needs of the clinical teams, the hospitals, and the patients.

As the utilization of robotic systems grows and these systems demonstrate value and improved patient care across the care cycle, this will continue to fuel further adoption. While there is a perception that surgeons will be "replaced", this is not actually the way increasing automation usually plays out in a highly skilled industry. Industry professionals need to collaborate with clinical stakeholders to embrace how procedures can optimally incorporate robotics to elevate what is possible to be done in surgery today and standardize more precise surgical treatments to a greater patient population.

At the end of the day, nobody resists what is best for the patient. Patients are calling for technologies that enable the most effective treatments, faster recoveries, and reduced complications. As technology continues to transform patient care, medical device manufacturers must adapt to the needs of the patient, the procedures, and the clinical teams. Surgeons are already taking advantage of the benefits of improved ergonomics, greater visibility, and the ability to treat patients earlier and with higher precision. These systems will continue to improve the automation of surgical tasks and the clinical workflow. By leveraging intelligent and distributed connectivity, it will be difficult to imagine surgeries without robots in the not-too-distant future.

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What's really happening in the medical robotics market - ZDNet

People will be quite sceptical for getting knee replacement surgery because of the opinions from various people. Sukhjit Sandhu was also the same about getting her knee replacement surgery after she witnessed how her husband always had some muscle pain when he walked or stood for a long time. His knee bending and range of motion also became limited, despite the passing of three years from the date of his surgery. Seeing his poor condition, despite the fear, her surgery was successful, and she went back to her normal life within a couple of days of her replacement.

Sandhu is one of the hundreds of happy patients to have successfully undergone robotics-assisted total knee replacement surgery since the launch of the internationally acclaimed and proven NAVIO Robotics Surgical System in India.

Originally developed in the US and approved by the US FDA after elaborate pre-clinical, clinical, and technical assessments for years, the system boasts of assisting surgeons across major hospitals in the US, Europe, Australia, and India, with thousands of patients benefiting every year from its precision, unparalleled results, and advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) that helps these surgeons deliver patient satisfaction at the highest level so far.

Conventional knee replacement vs robotics knee replacement

Though conventional joint replacement is a successful and safe procedure, out of the nearly 2,10,000 joint replacement procedures done every year in India, roughly 25 percent of the operated patients are still unsatisfied with their outcomes. That is close to 50,000 unhappy patients due to residual pain, restricted mobility, and an overall compromised lifestyle. Why does that happen despite skillful surgeons, bone cutting tools and some great hospital infrastructure in the non-robotic surgeries?

It's primarily because there is still a lot of room for improvement to overcome human error and complex patient conditions. That's where Robotics and Self learning Artificial Intelligence has come to the picture. It is definitely not a substitute for the surgeon. They merely assist the surgeon to ensure that there is accuracy and precision that the naked eye perceives and surgeons can do their best to achieve great results with highest patient satisfaction, every single time, in every type of joint in every patient, every day.

Benefits of Robotics knee replacement

Robotics is being adopted in every field and is being used now to successfully perform knee replacement procedures more precisely and accurately than ever before. Robotic knee replacement helps create a precise real-time image of the knee and then, by using a robotics-assisted hand piece which is operated by the surgeon, relays patient-specific information to the brain box of the robot in the operating room. The process creates a real time 4D model of the joint on the surgical table in a dynamic manner, eliminating the need for any CT scan or MRI prior to the knee operation. It allows surgeons the control to create a patient-specific plan in the Operating Room and the confidence to execute with 100 per cent robotic precision.

The robotic assistance ensures perfect execution of the customised plan. This leads to better implant fixation and longer-lasting implants because of perfect alignment. There is also less bleeding, less removal of bone, and better preservation of natural ligaments and structures that make the patient recover faster after surgery, have a much higher and pain-free range of motion, no muscle strain or instability, and a highly natural feeling so that the patient almost forgets that surgery was even done.

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Robotics in knee replacement - The Hans India

Mentions of robotics within the filings of companies in the automotive industry rose 124% between the first and second quarters of 2021.

In total, the frequency of sentences related to robotics between July 2020 and June 2021 was 24% higher than in 2016 when GlobalData, from whom our data for this article is taken, first began to track the key issues referred to in company filings.

When companies in the automotive industry publish annual and quarterly reports, ESG reports and other filings, GlobalData analyses the text and identifies individual sentences that relate to disruptive forces facing companies in the coming years. Robotics is one of these topics - companies that excel and invest in these areas are thought to be better prepared for the future business landscape and better equipped to survive unforeseen challenges.

To assess whether robotics is featuring more in the summaries and strategies of companies in the automotive industry, two measures were calculated. Firstly, we looked at the percentage of companies which have mentioned robotics at least once in filings during the past twelve months - this was 49% compared to 25% in 2016. Secondly, we calculated the percentage of total analysed sentences that referred to robotics.

Of the 50 biggest employers in the automotive industry, Yamaha Motor Co Ltd was the company which referred to robotics the most between July 2020 and June 2021. GlobalData identified 63 robotics-related sentences in the Japan-based company's filings - 0.9% of all sentences. Denso Corp mentioned robotics the second most - the issue was referred to in 0.6% of sentences in the company's filings. Other top employers with high robotics mentions included Toyoda Gosei Co Ltd, JTEKT Corp and Bridgestone Corp.

Across all companies in the automotive industry the filing published in the second quarter of 2021 which exhibited the greatest focus on robotics came from Yamaha Motor Co Ltd. Of the document's 1,459 sentences, nine (0.6%) referred to robotics.

This analysis provides an approximate indication of which companies are focusing on robotics and how important the issue is considered within the automotive industry, but it also has limitations and should be interpreted carefully. For example, a company mentioning robotics more regularly is not necessarily proof that they are utilising new techniques or prioritising the issue, nor does it indicate whether the company's ventures into robotics have been successes or failures.

In the last quarter, companies in the automotive industry based in Asia were most likely to mention robotics with 0.09% of sentences in company filings referring to the issue. In contrast, companies with their headquarters in Western Europe mentioned robotics in just 0.01% of sentences.

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Filings buzz in the automotive industry: 124% increase in robotics mentions in Q2 of 2021 - just-auto.com

Cleo Robotics is announcing that its palm-fitting Dronut X1 drone, which is designed specifically for indoor operations, is now available to buy commercially. A ducted fan design gives the Dronut its unconventional looks and allows it to fly comfortably near people, in tight spaces, and around sensitive equipment.

To achieve flight stability, this indoor drone uses a thrust vectoring technology that has been patented by Cleo Robotics. The Dronut X1 also comes equipped with some of the best autonomous navigation technologies, powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon and a suite of sensors including LiDAR-powered obstacle detection for operations in GPS-denied environments.

With its propellers completely enclosed, the rugged and portable X1 is made out of carbon fiber composite materials, allowing it to safely bounce off objects and people. This makes the drone ideal for autonomous industrial inspections (tanks, pressure vessels, crawl spaces, etc.) and construction monitoring.

Also read: 550-gram R&D drone can navigate indoors autonomously

Meanwhile, Cleo Robotics says the drone can also be used as a surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) solution by defense customers. Even law enforcement agencies can benefit from an intelligent indoor drone that can scout areas in advance of deploying officers into high-risk situations. For facility security, the drone can act as a flying surveillance camera.

Weighing less than a pound and measuring only 6.5 inches in diameter, Cleo Robotics stresses its Dronut X1 is the first professional-grade, collision-tolerant, safe-to-touch, intelligent indoor drone that carries advanced payloads and can come in direct contact with people without risk of harm. It can also operate in low-light conditions.

As Omar Eleryan, founder and CEO, Cleo Robotics, sums up:

Built to solve what had been thought of as unsolvable technical challenges with ducted fan aerial vehicles, we developed and tested the Dronut platform through rigorous and innovative engineering. We are excited to see the impact that the Dronut X1 will have on the industries that it is designed to serve. Having worked in the oil industry, I experienced the dangers and costs associated with confined space inspections. The Dronut X1 is the solution that removes the need to risk humans safety on the job.

You can buy the Dronut X1 here for $9,800.

Read more: DJI slashes SDK development kit price by up to 56%

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This nontraditional Cleo Robotics indoor drone is now available to buy - DroneDJ

Global leader in the development of highly dexterous mobile robotic systemsmore than doubles footprint to facilitate expansion and initial commercial production

SALT LAKE CITY November 18, 2021 Sarcos Technology and Robotics Corporation(Sarcos) (NASDAQ: STRC and STRCW), a leader in the development of robotic systems that augment humans to enhance productivity and safety, today announced that it has moved into a new headquarters and production facility in the Granary District of Salt Lake City. The move to the new innovative office, lab space, and production facility, comprising more than 60,000 square feet, comes as the company completes the commercialization of its award-winning industrial robotic exoskeleton and teleoperated industrial robotic avatar products.

Sarcos is expecting to increase its headcount by 60-70% over the course of 2022. It expects to start producing the commercial version of itsGuardianXOfull-body, battery-powered industrial exoskeletonandGuardianXTteleoperated dexterous mobile robotic avatar systemat the end of 2022.The new space, which nearly doubles the size of its previous headquarters, includes an extensive test lab and demonstration space for customer use case validation and trials. Sarcos estimates that it will be able to produce between 300 and 500 commercial units of its Guardian XO exoskeleton and Guardian XT robotic system per year at its new facility.

We are thrilled to be in our new, state-of-the-art headquarters, said Ben Wolff, Chairman and CEO, Sarcos. With the significant company growth we are expecting over the next several years, we needed a building that could accommodate additional employees as well initial production of our flagship commercial products.

The new Sarcos headquarters is located at 650 S 500 W. Suite 150, Salt Lake City, UT, 84101, within theINDUSTRYSalt Lake City building. INDUSTRYis a modern office space with two additional locations in Denver and houses a large variety of tenants in addition to Sarcos.The company has signed a 12-year lease with options to extend for up to six additional years. Barb Johnson and Kreg Peterson from CBRE represented Sarcos on the lease transaction.

For more information on Sarcos and its award-winning product portfolio, please visitwww.sarcos.com.

About Sarcos Technology and Robotics Corporation

Sarcos Technology and Robotics Corporation (NASDAQ: STRC and STRCW) is a leader in industrial robotic systems that augment human performance by combining human intelligence, instinct, and judgment with the strength, endurance, and precision of machines to enhance employee safety and productivity. Leveraging more than 30 years of research and development, Sarcos mobile robotic systems, including the GuardianS, GuardianGT, GuardianXO, and GuardianXT, are designed to revolutionize the future of work wherever physically demanding work is done. Sarcos is based in Salt Lake City, Utah. For more information, please visitwww.sarcos.com.

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Sarcos Technology and Robotics Corporation Moves into New Headquarters and Production Facility in Salt Lake City - Food Industry Executive

The Danbury High School robotics team competed in its third competition of the season on Nov. 13, with two of its four robots placing third and fifth of 42 competing area teams.

The robotic teams 5150 consist of a handful of students who are given control of the process of creating the robots. The learning style allows them to learn from each other as they are encouraged to help one another without a lot of input from advisors. They are given the opportunity to develop the robots by themselves and dedicate their time to perfecting the robots. For almost 10 years, the DHS Robotics Team, an afterschool program led by Team Advisor Erik Savoyski, has successfully qualified robots for the VEX Robotics world championships, which culminate the season every spring.

At the Nov. 13 competition at Ridgefield High School, DHS Team 5150D finished third, H team placed fifth and teams E and J finished 14 and 34, respectively. Team D was defeated in the final match and took home the tournament finalist award. The Team D robot was also awarded the Design award for the best engineering notebook for an unprecedent third time in a row.

Teams D, H and J currently hold fourth, seventh and 11th places, respectively in robot and programming skills in Southern New England, a separate competition for the most points scored in one minute on an open playing field.

The next robotics competition will be held Nov. 20 at Weston High School.

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Robotics team places third, fifth in third competition of season - HamletHub

Around the same time that Isaac Asimov published his short story introducing the laws of robotics in 1942, the worlds first nuclear reactor was being built under the viewing stands of a football field at the University of Chicago.

There had been some misgivings about initiating a chain reaction in the middle of a densely populated city, but Enrico Fermi, the Italian physicist leading the experiment, calculated that it was safe to do so. On its initial successful run, the Chicago Pile-1 reactor ran for four minutes, generating less than a watt of power about enough to illuminate one small Christmas tree ornament. The reaction was a major step in the development of nuclear energy, but it was also one of the earliest technical achievements of the Manhattan Project, the US-led initiative during the Second World War culminating in the atomic bombs that incinerated Hiroshima and Nagasaki two and half years later.

The scientists involved knew that their work had the potential for creation as well as destruction. The question was how to ensure that its beneficial use in power generation and medicine did not also lead to proliferation of weapons threatening the existence of humanity.

After the conclusion of the war, that was the subject of the very first resolution passed by the General Assembly of the United Nations. It created a commission tasked with recommending how to eliminate such weapons, while enabling all nations to benefit from peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

When it comes to artificial intelligence, the history of efforts to safeguard nuclear power is relevant. Like AI, this is an example of a technology with enormous potential for good and ill that has, for the most part, been used positively. Nuclear power, though currently out of favour, is one of the few realistic energy alternatives to hydrocarbons; its use in medicine and agriculture is more accepted and widespread. Observers from the dark days of the Cold War anticipated this, but would have been surprised to learn that nuclear weapons were not used in conflict after 1945 and that only a handful of states possess them the better part of a century later.

Secondly, the international regime offers a possible model of regulation of AI at the global level. The grand bargain at the heart of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was that the beneficial purposes of technology could be distributed in tandem with a mechanism to ensure that those were the only purposes to which it was applied. That trade-off raised the level of trust between the then-superpowers, as well as between the nuclear haves and have-nots.

The equivalent weaponisation of AI either narrowly, through the development of autonomous weapons systems, or broadly, in the form of a general AI or superintelligence that might threaten humanity is today beyond the capacity of most states. For weapons systems, at least, that technical gap will not last long. Much as the small number of nuclear armed states is due to the decision of states not to develop such weapons and a non-proliferation regime to verify this, limits on the dangerous application of AI will need to rely on the choices of states as well as enforcement.

Clearly, it will be necessary to establish red lines to prohibit certain activities. Weaponised or uncontainable AI are the most obvious candidates. Mere reliance on industry self-restraint will not preserve such prohibitions. Moreover, if those red lines are to be enforced consistently and effectively then some measure of global coordination and cooperation is required. Here the analogy with nuclear weapons is most pertinent.

The effective regulation of AI requires norms and institutions that operate at the global level. The creation of an organisation like the IAEA, what I call the IAIA (an International Artificial Intelligence Agency), could permit a deal where countries with capacity, like the United States and China, agree to share some of that technology around the world, so that they all get the benefits of AI optimisation. But those benefits would come in exchange for a promise not to weaponise AI in terms of lethal autonomous weapons, as well as guarding against the possibility of a rogue or malignant super-intelligence that was uncontrollable or uncontainable.

This new grand bargain could offer benefits comparable to nuclear energys contributions to power, medicine and agriculture.

Moreover, unless there is some level of global regulation, it would be too easy for AI technology to move around the world. In the absence of global agreement, it would be impossible to enforce any of the red lines that we need to stop most immediately lethal autonomous weapons being given the power to make life-and-death decisions in the battlefield.

All this might sound nave, but in addition to nuclear weapons, weve seen other dangerous technologies outlawed: chemical and biological weapons, human cloning, and so on. The dangers posed by AI may seem further off into the future, but it is already clear that those dangers and the means of addressing them have moved beyond the realm of science fiction.

This is an edited excerpt from Simon Chestermans new book, We, The Robots?, in which he makes the case for a new global agency to regulate the development of artificial intelligence. You can read more about the book here.

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Redlining the robots - Cosmos

The new innovation centre will bring healthcare professionals from Europe, Middle East and Africa together with Smith+Nephew's R&D and medical education teams to explore digital surgery and robotics techniques and technologies. At the heart of this will be Real Intelligence, Smith+Nephew's digital ecosystem, including the new state-of-the-art robotics-assisted surgical system CORI.

The centre will feature a dedicated medical education facility, where surgeons can refine techniques and experience the latest technology through hands-on learning and immersive simulation technology.

The centre will also home Smith+Nephew's digital surgery and robotics R+D team, enabling them to collaborate with surgeons, scientists and engineers, driving innovation that meets unmet clinical needs. Many of this team joined Smith+Nephew from Brainlab under the terms of a collaboration agreement announced in 2019.

Smith+Nephew EMEA President, Peter Coenen said, "We are excited to be announcing this state-of-the-art facility focused on the development and delivery of digital surgery technologies and techniques. We look forward to sharing our plans as we progress our technology vision, and to welcoming customers to experience a new approach to medical education when we open next year."

The new facility, which is expected to open late 2022, will be situated at the Rhythm complex at Kustermann Park, in central Munich. It joins Smith+Nephew's recently opened robotics R&D and medical education facility in Pittsburgh, US in offering a unique collaborative approach to customer experience and product development.

About Smith+NephewSmith+Nephew is a portfolio medical technology business that exists to restore people's bodies and their self-belief by using technology to take the limits off living. We call this purpose 'Life Unlimited'. Our 18,000 employees deliver this mission every day, making a difference to patients'lives through the excellence of our product portfolio, and the invention and application of new technologies acrossour three global franchises of Orthopaedics, Advanced Wound Management and Sports Medicine & ENT.

Founded in Hull, UK, in 1856, we now operate in more than 100 countries, and generated annual sales of $4.6 billion in 2020. Smith+Nephew is a constituent of the FTSE100 (LSE:SN,NYSE:SNN). The terms 'Group' and 'Smith+Nephew' are used to refer to Smith & Nephew plcand its consolidated subsidiaries, unless the context requires otherwise.

For more information about Smith+Nephew, please visit http://www.smith-nephew.com and follow us onTwitter,LinkedIn, InstagramorFacebook.

Forward-looking StatementsThis document may contain forward-looking statements that may or may not prove accurate. For example, statements regarding expected revenue growth and trading margins, market trends and our product pipeline are forward-looking statements. Phrases such as "aim", "plan", "intend", "anticipate", "well-placed", "believe", "estimate", "expect", "target", "consider" and similar expressions are generally intended to identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from what is expressed or implied by the statements. For Smith+Nephew, these factors include: risks related to the impact of COVID-19, such as the depth and longevity of its impact, government actions and other restrictive measures taken in response, material delays and cancellations of elective procedures, reduced procedure capacity at medical facilities, restricted access for sales representatives to medical facilities, or our ability to execute business continuity plans as a result of COVID-19; economic and financial conditions in the markets we serve, especially those affecting health care providers, payers and customers (including, without limitation, as a result of COVID-19); price levels for established and innovative medical devices; developments in medical technology; regulatory approvals, reimbursement decisions or other government actions; product defects or recalls or other problems with quality management systems or failure to comply with related regulations; litigation relating to patent or other claims; legal compliance risks and related investigative, remedial or enforcement actions; disruption to our supply chain or operations or those of our suppliers (including, without limitation, as a result of COVID-19); competition for qualified personnel; strategic actions, including acquisitions and dispositions, our success in performing due diligence, valuing and integrating acquired businesses; disruption that may result from transactions or other changes we make in our business plans or organisation to adapt to market developments; and numerous other matters that affect us or our markets, including those of a political, economic, business, competitive or reputational nature. Please refer to the documents that Smith+Nephew has filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission under the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, including Smith+Nephew's most recent annual report on Form 20-F, for a discussion of certain of these factors. Any forward-looking statement is based on information available to Smith+Nephew as of the date of the statement. All written or oral forward-looking statements attributable to Smith+Nephew are qualified by this caution. Smith+Nephew does not undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement to reflect any change in circumstances or in Smith+Nephew's expectations.

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Smith+Nephew announces digital surgery and robotics innovation centre in Europe - PRNewswire