Three UK academics who build surgical robots, rehabilitation devices and surgical imaging software took questions on robotics in medicine at the Great Exhibition Road Festival in London. The session was recorded live. The panel was George Mylonas of Imperial College London, Antonia Tzemanaki of the University of Bristol and Tom Vercauteren of King's College London.
The discussion started from a timeline. The first robot-assisted surgery took place more than 40 years ago. Since then, advances in robotics, computer vision and artificial intelligence have changed medicine and healthcare. Tools that assist skilled clinicians are already in use for diagnosis, surgery and rehabilitation.
Three research profiles
George Mylonas is an Associate Professor in Robotics and Technology in Cancer at Imperial College London. He directs the Human-centred Automation, Robotics and Monitoring in Surgery lab. The lab sits within The Hamlyn Centre, the Institute of Global Health Innovation and the Department of Surgery & Cancer in the Faculty of Medicine. His research covers surgical robotics, soft robotics, minimal access surgical technology, perceptual human-robot and human-computer interfaces, and smart data-driven operating theatres. He is a member of the European Association of Endoscopic Surgery Technology Committee.
Antonia Tzemanaki is a Senior Lecturer in Robotics at the University of Bristol and a core member of the Bristol Robotics Laboratory. She leads the Dexterous Manipulation and Wearable Robotics group. The group builds robotic simulators and interventions, including robotic needle steering and abdominal, urology, skull and hand models. These support surgical and physical therapy treatment of diseases that include cancers, neurological disorders, prostate disorders and urinary disorders. Its expertise covers precision manipulation, robot hands, hand exoskeletons, kinematics, haptics and wearable robotics. The applications named are surgery, preventative medicine, rehabilitation, physiotherapy and dexterous tele-operation.
Tom Vercauteren is a Professor of Interventional Image Computing at King's College London. He leads the Contextual Artificial Intelligence for Computer Assisted Interventions research group. His work centres on medical image computing, machine learning and imaging for surgery and interventional sciences. He is also co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Hypervision Surgical, a spin-out company developing safe, non-invasive optical imaging for use during surgery. His work is now used in hundreds of hospitals worldwide. He also supports open-source software and patient involvement.
The questions the panel was asked to address
The session was framed around three open problems. The first is ethical: what issues arise as medical tools become more autonomous. The second is regulatory: how to oversee technologies that can learn and change over time. The third is access: how to make sure that cutting-edge medical devices are available to everyone and not only to well-resourced institutions.
The panel's range of work shows why these questions are hard to separate. One speaker works on the operating theatre as a data-driven environment. One works on devices a patient wears or a surgeon operates at a distance. One works on software that interprets images during an intervention. Each category raises a different version of the same concern: who is responsible when a system does more than follow a fixed instruction.
Analysis: what this means for the field
The panel is notable for its mix more than for any single announcement. No new device, trial result or regulatory decision was described. What the line-up shows is that medical robotics now spans hardware, sensing and software, and that these strands are developed by different groups. Mylonas's work on human-centred interfaces, Tzemanaki's work on dexterity and haptics, and Vercauteren's work on imaging and machine learning are complementary parts of one clinical workflow. That makes the autonomy question a system-level one and not a property of any single robot.
Vercauteren's career offers a useful point of comparison. His imaging work has moved from a university research group into a spin-out company, and the source states that his work is used in hundreds of hospitals worldwide. That is a concrete sign of translation from lab to clinic. It also shows that software and imaging tools can reach hospitals at scale, which is a different path from that of a large surgical robot. Its relevance to the regulatory question is direct: a learning component embedded in an imaging tool has to be assessed differently from a fixed mechanical system. The source does not say how regulators are handling this, so that part of the picture remains open.
Several things remain unproven on the evidence available. The source does not provide data on how autonomous current systems are, how often they are used, or how outcomes compare with conventional care. It does not report any agreed approach to regulating technologies that change after deployment. It also gives no figures on cost or availability, so the access question cannot be assessed from it. Open-source software and patient involvement, which Vercauteren supports, are plausible routes to wider access and better design. Whether they are sufficient is not demonstrated here.
The practical takeaway for the field is about priorities. The speakers' stated concerns, ethics, regulation of adaptive systems and equitable access, are not technical afterthoughts. They are the conditions under which more autonomous tools can be adopted. Groups building the next generation of surgical and rehabilitation devices will need to answer them alongside performance claims. A public festival setting suggests that researchers also see public understanding as part of that work, although the source does not report what the audience asked or concluded.