How to Set Expectations and Exceed Them

‘Excellence is the unlimited ability to improve the quality of what you have to offer.’  Rick Pitino.

In 2020, American Hospital Dubai launched its robotic surgery facility with the 4^th Generation Da Vinci Robotic System. It was a milestone moment for several reasons. We were the first facility in the region to have this device, which helped us enter the transformative world of robotic surgery. Striding into the new arena in healthcare helped us acquire the invaluable assets of robotic surgery - heightened surgical awareness and the operating surgeon’s migratory presence.

As the evolution of robotic surgery has shown, these advantages are fundamental to its ability to transcend conventional surgical outcomes. The invaluable gift of robotic and computer-aided surgery is to help a surgeon visually migrate to the field of operation with a degree of intimacy beyond traditional sight and scope.

It makes robotic or robot-assisted surgery a man-and-machine partnership guided by altruistic motives that crosses a new threshold into improved patient-centric care.

Can a healthcare provider remain an outsider to this privilege? Should it be an option? No.

Entering the robot surgery era gave us new impetus, promoting our passion to serve humanity better.

Today, people have a more nuanced understanding of robotic surgery’s capabilities; we also know that from the initial ambivalence that greeted its debut in the 1960s, its efficacy and relevance are increasingly being welcomed, lauded, and accepted by patients, pushing the surgical robots’ market to touch the $5.2 billion mark in 2021 and expected to touch $22.8 billion by 2030.

Over 60,000 surgeons worldwide have been trained in the da Vinci robotic system, and it feels good to say American Hospital Dubai’s surgeons are among these skilled assets to the healthcare industry.

Our Center of Excellence in Robotic Surgery (COERS), the first private healthcare facility in the region to earn accreditation from the US-based Surgical Review Corporation (SRC), is an integral part of the new surgical era. Our Centre’s vision and mission share this core value: build and sustain an ongoing improvement culture to enable people to benefit from the best healthcare.

This core value shapes our legacy.

The earlier notions of robotic surgery’s relevance, efficacy and impact briefly flirted with the skeptical, but that phase is done with. Robotic surgery is well past adolescence and has entered adulthood as it amplifies and aids surgeons’ skills for enhanced visualization, precision, control, dexterity, and outcome.

This intent is an unmissable opportunity, a catalyst, and a guide to new healthcare frontiers to manifest our patient-care values better.

Robotic surgery helps us put our money where our mouth is.

When we launched our Center of Excellence in Robotic Surgery (COERS), our objectives and the path ahead were clear: it would be a journey of destinations.

Every surgery would be a destination, and every destination was in sight because we ensured we invested in the means to get there. We acquired the ROSA® Knee System, the Versuis® Robot Surgical System, and the Mazor X Stealth™ Edition Robotic Guidance System, the next-generation robotic guidance system for spinal surgeries that offers exceptional pre-operative or intra-operative planning and implementation.

We were the first to bring all these to the Middle East, and our over 1,000 robotic surgeries bear testimony to our successful navigation. 

There is a wonderful Greek concept called Arete. It signifies the highest human ability and the pursuit of the best one can be. It is a fuel, an accelerator, an enabler. You can say it is a synonym for excellence. With a firm hand, it pushes you to go the extra mile and seek your purpose beyond the here and now.

When we looked at the ability of robotic surgery to lead us to new shores of possibilities, we saw the next milestone to head for and partnered with CMR Surgicals and UAE-based Robotics Surgical Systems (RSS) to establish a training center for Versius® in Dubai.

Set up in July 2021, it is the region's first robotic surgery training hub and educational academy in the MEA region, providing surgeons with hands-on experience with Versius®. It also offers fellowship programs to speed up the region’s adoption of this technology.

We are committed to bringing next-generation skills to the region’s surgeons. The training hub and academy on the hospital’s premises will offer courses in all Robotic Minimal Access Surgery (RMAS) areas. The internationally recognized program will train surgeons, surgical assistants, nurses, and coordinators in various specialties. We already have the highest volume of candidates.

Exceeding expectations is fortuitous. It is the adrenaline that keeps us going. American Hospital Dubai’s alliance with robotic surgery is a vital element of our pact with our patients: to provide them with the best healthcare they deserve.

We wake up each day and honor our pact.