Shanghai Stock Exchange recently published a notice saying it will review on June 1 the application by Harbin Sagebot Intelligent Medical Equipment Co. Ltd (哈尔滨思哲睿智能医疗设备, hereafter referred to as Sagebot) to list on the STAR market.
This signals a pivotal moment for the Harbin-based industry leader, which is among the country’s first batch of developers of endoscopic surgical robots.
Incubated by the prestigious Harbin Institute of Technology, Sagebot submitted a prospectus in October last year with Shanghai Stock Exchange for an IPO, with CITIC Securities acting as its sponsor.
After ten years of research, Sagebot has aquired a suite of core technologies, and rolled out endoscopic surgical robots catering to hospital departments of urology, gynecology, general and thoracic surgery.
Besides, it also possesses other product lines tailored to the needs of ear-nose-throat, urgologic and orthopedic departments.
The KangDuo Robot series, a staple of Sagebot, is aimed at performing complicated minimally invasive procedures and stands out for operational precision, resistance to vibration, and the sense of comfort it delivers to surgeons, according to Chinese media reports.
SR1000, a member of the KangDuo family, is the first urological endoscopic surgical robot to enter the special review process for innovative medical equipment in China.
The device landed a certificate in urological surgery in June 2022 from the National Medical Product Administration, and was officially approved in February this year by national authorities to be applied in robot-assisted urological surgery.
SR1500 and SR2000, another two products from the KangDuo series, have been subject to and passed type examination, pending clinical trial.
Sagebot said their predecessor SR1000 began sale in the first quarter of 2023, with tangible commercialization results.
Notably, to prove its capability, Sagebot compared the performance of its KangDuo robot with that of the Da Vinci system from Intuitive Surgical in partial kidney removal and treatment of prostrate cancer. Both achieved a 100% success rate in efficacy endpoints.
According to some market observers, this suggests that Sagebot will be able to take on Da Vinci, a market incumbent, turn up the heat on it and even shake up its monopoly.
China’s surgical robot market rocketed from a mere 880 million yuan to 4.19 billion yuan from 2017 to 2021, averaging a CAGR of 47.6%, Frost & Sullivan indicated in a report.
Despite the tremendously bigger size, the industry is still a fraction of the global market for surgical robot, which has grown at a CAGR of 25.2% to US$10.91 billion from US$4.45 billion worldwide during the same period.
