Megan Walker with Intuitive Surgical
Juniors and seniors from the LHS Pantherbots Robotics Club had the opportunity to experience working with a multi-million dollar surgical robot thanks to Woodland Heights Medical Center. Megan Walker, Clinical Sales Representative (Lufkin High School 2002 graduate) for Intuitive Surgical, demonstrated the da Vinci Xi Surgical System, the latest technology development for robotic surgery.
According to Intuitive Surgical’s website, Intuitive was founded in 1995 to create “innovative, robotic-assisted systems that help empower doctors and hospitals to make surgery less invasive than an open approach.”
Ms. Walker showed the students a number of instruments and allowed them to test drive the actual robot and a test simulation robot. The students asked questions wanting to know about what types of surgeries the robot can assist in, if the robot had safety features, and the type of programming that is used for the robot to work.
Ms. Walker gave a detailed explanation of how the robot works and how it even has safety features that will adjust if the surgeon has tremors. The robot was on display for the day at Woodland Heights, which gave area schools the opportunity to come see how the da Vinci Xi Surgical System has streamlined surgery. Lufkin has three of these machines out of 4,000 nationwide.
Thank you, Woodland Heights and Intuitive Surgical , for sharing this opportunity with our students!
