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Professors build robots to do surgery in remote places, from Sandhills to Mars


Virtual Incision is a startup at Nebraska Innovation Campus (University of Nebraska-Lincoln)
Virtual Incision is a startup at Nebraska Innovation Campus (University of Nebraska-Lincoln)
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Nebraskans are doers and builders, and a hardware store in Ravenna may have been the perfect playground for an engineer who now designs tools that could save a soldier or astronaut's life.

And while Shane Farritor may never leave the atmosphere, his work already has.

“My background's in Mars rovers, I worked with NASA,” the engineering professor said.

His current challenge is creating tools allowing surgeons to work virtually anywhere.

“I think about people in Mullen and Thedford who might get in a car accident, rupture your spleen and you need care soon and you're an hour and a half from a hospital. We think a device like this should be in every ambulance and provide care in tough situations,” Farritor said.

Robots could help surgeons help patients from the Sandhills to the moon.

“On the University side we've done research for both the Army and NASA because both those organizations want to do surgery in crazy places,” he said.

Virtual Incision has raised tens of millions in funding, creating little robots for general surgery, like colon cancer.

“It's really just another tool in the surgeon's toolbox, another way to perform the actions,” he said.

Tools in the toolbox are nothing new for a guy who grew up tinkering in his parent's Ravenna hardware store.

“We're fix it people, solve it on our own folks. Everybody that walked in that store had a problem, something was broken down, they didn't have the right parts, they had to find a way to fix it, and my parents worked with them to come up with a good solution. Farmers are problem solvers,” he said.

He may have left the hardware store, but he's still surrounded by doers at Nebraska Innovation Campus.

“If you can give them more and more tools, they really understand how to use those and they are so creative that they do things no one ever thought would've happened,” said Dan Duncan, executive director of NIC.

Farritor said it’s allowed Virtual Incision to grow.

He said “We love being at Innovation Campus because there's so much happening here. The maker space is a great facility. We can quickly prototype devices and talk to other people building things.”

Farritor said they're constantly testing, as they work to bring the surgical robots to market.

They face competition, but Farritor says other robotic surgery tools are large, while virtual incision uses portable devices.

And while it's robotic, it's not automated; A surgeon uses a console to remotely control the devices.

“I think the robots are getting better and better and we're in a field where we can help a lot of people and that's what we're trying to do,” Farritor said.

It's a suite of tools that could save a life on the battlefield or mars, even in rural Nebraska.

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