Assessing the Robot-Assisted Surgical Systems between Developed and Developing Economies

Abstract

Robot-assisted surgery (RAS) is a revolutionary technology for the surgeons, doctors and physicians. Although RAS deployment is rapid since 2019, despite decades of successful robotic assisted surgeries in the developed economies that have positively impacted millions of patients, RAS was barely explored by the developing countries compared to the developed countries whereby capabilities to enhance and improve the levels of expertise is limited besides acquisition and operating costs. This paper aims to raise awareness and compare what is the future of RAS in selected developing countries given its multitude of needs and challenges? Is RAS still in early days and too expensive to be put to general use in these developing economies today? We applied indicators to test the adoption of RAS using the economic consideration of robotic surgery in health economics. We examine the likelihood of acquiring and using RAS with different market characteristics from 2000 to 2022. We used data on traditional and robot-assisted surgical interventions and transform it into an improved version on Quality-Adjusted Life Year (QALY) and Willingness-to-Pay for Robot-Assisted Surgery (WTPR). Asia growth was spectacular. China’s participation resulted in closing the gap much faster in advanced medical technology and treatment such as RAS between developing and developed economies beside knowledge diffusion. South Koreans had catch up with the Europeans i.e., Italy, Germany, France and UK. China’s total patents had explosive growth and the robot density was among the highest among the selected economies compared in this study.