Robotic Assisted Surgery

In May 2024 the CEIH accept­ed the respon­si­bil­i­ty for col­lab­o­rat­ing with the Sur­gi­cal and Peri­op­er­a­tive Care Statewide Clin­i­cal Net­work (SPC­SCN), Depart­ment of Health and Well­be­ing (DHW) and the Local Health Net­works (LHN’s) on a statewide pop­u­la­tion-based plan which will address issues relat­ing to ade­quate and equi­table access to robot­ic assist­ed surgery (RAS) across the health sys­tem in South Aus­tralia (SA). Cur­rent­ly, SA has five DaVin­ci Robot Sur­gi­cal Sys­tems, one locat­ed in the pub­lic health sys­tem at the Roy­al Ade­laide Hos­pi­tal and four locat­ed in pri­vate hospitals. 

The fol­low­ing activ­i­ties were con­duct­ed to pro­duce evi­dence-based and data-informed rec­om­men­da­tions to the Health Chief Exec­u­tives’ Coun­cil (HCEC):

1. review of lit­er­a­ture to inves­ti­gate his­tor­i­cal, con­tem­po­rary, and pre­dic­tive per­spec­tives on RAS, to deter­mine rel­e­vance to the South Aus­tralian context. 
2. access and analy­sis of data to pro­duce a suf­fi­cient­ly accu­rate rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the sup­ply and demand rela­tion­ship relat­ed to equi­table access to RAS. 
3. exten­sive con­sul­ta­tion with clin­i­cians, sur­gi­cal admin­is­tra­tive staff and lead­ers from DHW and LHNs who have a direct rel­e­vance to the pro­vi­sion of RAS ser­vices to gain indus­try insight into the cur­rent con­text and future considerations. 

The rec­om­men­da­tions to address ade­quate and equi­table access to RAS have been endorsed by HCEC and is await­ing fur­ther guid­ance to deter­mine pri­or­i­ty of actions and allo­ca­tion of responsibility. 

If you are inter­est­ed to find out more about this project, con­tact us at: CEIH.​SurgicalPerioperative@​sa.​gov.​au.