CMR Surgical announced a new effort with Nvidia to train the next generation of intelligent surgical systems.
The Cambridge, U.K.–based based surgical robot developer unveiled its participation in Nvidia’s Physial AI healthcare robotics initiative at Nvidia GTC. As part of the initiative, the company contributed the majority of surgical data used to create Open-H, the world’s largest open dataset for healthcare robotics.
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According to CMR Surgical, the dataset combines real-world surgical video, robotic telemetry and multimodal data. The company contributed close to 500 hours of anonymized surgical data from its Versius surgical robotic system.
This marks the latest collaboration between CMR Surgical and Nvidia, a leader in AI and cloud computing. Last fall, the company became an early adopter of Nvidia’s IGX Thor platform for surgical robotics. Johnson & Johnson MedTech, Karl Storz’s Asensus, Moon Surgical, Virtual Incision, Neptune Surgical and Stereotaxis also have ongoing surgical robotic collaborations with Nvidia.
CMR Surgical said the Open-H initiative underpins Isaac GRooT-H, the first open vision-language action model for healthcare robotics. Technologies in the effort aim to accelerate the development of intelligent robotic systems while maintaining safety and clinical oversight.
The company said that Nvidia physical AI infrastructure enables the training and evaluation of robotic systems in simulated environments before deployment to help accelerate deployment while maintaining safety standards, using Versius data to deliver this.
Versius, a digitally enabled surgical platform, became the first multi-port, soft tissue general robotic-assisted surgical device to gain clearance through the FDA’s de novo process just over a year ago. The small-scale surgical robotic system features collaborative arms and bedside units for direct patient access. It also features offers of port placement to best suit the needs of each patient.
CMR Surgical said its contribution of anonymized data can support broader innovation across the healthcare robotics community.
Chris Fryer, chief technology officer at CMR Surgical, said:
“Surgical robotics generates a rich understanding of how procedures are performed. By contributing real‑world surgical data to collaborative initiatives like Open‑H, we are helping build the foundations for the next generation of intelligent surgical systems. Because Versius is the most software-driven robot on the market, we were well-placed to share our data with the wider ecosystem. Our focus is on technologies that support surgeons and expand access to minimally invasive surgery. Combining clinical data with advances in AI and simulation creates a powerful opportunity to accelerate innovation responsibly.”
David Niewolny, head of business development for Healthcare and Medical Technology at NVIDIA, said:
“The next generation of surgical robotics will be powered by data, simulation and AI working together. By responsibly contributing surgical data and training open models on NVIDIA’s physical AI platform, medical technology leaders like CMR Surgical are accelerating a new generation of intelligent robotic systems that can assist surgeons, scale surgical expertise and ultimately expand access to high-quality care.”
