Israel G Vargas
“It’s time to get rid of the scars,” says Mark Slack, a gynaecologist and co-founder of robotic surgery startup CMR Surgical. Cambridge-based CMR Surgical was founded in 2014 – Slack remembers how, when the company started, surgeons wanted a robot that was suitable for all surgical disciplines: equivalent in cost to a straight-stick surgery, adaptable to any theatre, modular and quick to set up and take down. “There was nothing like it,” he says. “So what did we do? We had to build our own robot.” The result is the Versius, a surgical robot designed to help surgeons perform keyhole surgery. Today, the company employs around 500 people and, after raising more than $100 million (£75.2 million) in June 2018, it’s now valued at more than $1 billion (£759 million), making it one of the rare unicorns in medtech.