Surgical Robotics Technology
Intuitive has announced a $45 million gift to the Intuitive Foundation that will be used to support the Foundation’s mission of reducing the global burden of disease and suffering through philanthropy, research, and education aimed at better outcomes for patients everywhere. This latest donation brings the contributions made by Intuitive to the Foundation to more than $170 million since it was founded in 2018.
“We are pleased to support the important work that the Intuitive Foundation undertakes in providing health and medical fellowships and grants worldwide, and programs that support STEM and other research endeavors,” said Intuitive CEO Gary Guthart.
The Intuitive Foundation promotes health and advances education by making grants for medical research, STEM educational programs, training, surgical fellowships, healthcare training programs and facilities, and other similar purposes. Since its inception, the Foundation has committed more than $65 million to causes in support of its mission.
In 2024 alone, the Foundation matched the generosity of Intuitive employees through its donation-matching program, providing more than $7 million to support more than 2,000 causes.
“Amplifying the voice of Intuitive employees and the causes that are meaningful to them is a key pillar of the Intuitive Foundation’s philanthropic giving,” said Intuitive Foundation President Catherine Mohr, MD. “Additionally, in 2024, we were able to provide research grants and surgical fellowships totalling more than $6 million, and we were able to contribute $3 million to support the Surgical Education Learners Forum, which develops training modules for clinicians in low-resource settings.”
Key programs of the Foundation include:
Global Surgical Training Challenge (GSTC): The GSTC was launched in 2020 to stimulate the creation of novel, low-cost surgical education training modules. These open-source modules help surgical practitioners learn and assess new skills to improve the health of their communities. The competition started with 42 teams from 44 countries and took place over three years, narrowing to four finalist teams.
FIRST Robotics: The Foundation is a proud sponsor of FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) high school robotics teams, awarding grants to these teams around the world. The Foundation has made grants to 889 robotic teams from Australia, Canada, Israel, Mexico, Taiwan, Turkey, and the United States to date.
The Surgical Education Learners Forum (SELF): SELF is a community of practice aimed at addressing the global burden of disease by developing innovative, cost-effective, and scalable solutions for procedural skills training. After the GSTC completed in December 2022, the team took the learnings and evolved the program into a forum for developing self-administered skills assessment. SELF develops training modules for clinicians in low-resource settings. Modules are free-to-use and publicly available. In August 2024, the second SELF Symposium was held in Malaysia with over 15 training modules developed.
Source: Intuitive Surgical
