Robots at Work Nicholson Center Offers Latest in
HIGH-TECH SURGICAL TRAINING AND RESEARCH By Diane Sears
W
ith straps around each middle finger and thumb, he peers into the visor at a screen where red, blue and yellow star-shaped jacks are scattered across a table. Each move he makes with his hands operates the arms on the screen as a computer tracks how quickly and accurately he can place the items into matchingcolor petri dishes. Getting them there involves dexterity and strategy — and a bit of just pure faith that the machine will follow his commands. It seems like a children’s game, but it’s serious business. Doctors use the dV-Trainer machine to get the feel for its more complicated cousin, the da Vinci Surgical System. Produced by California-based company Intuitive, the da Vinci is used in abdominal surgery that is less invasive for the patient and more ergonomically fit for doctors. It’s one of three types of robotic surgery systems in the training labs at the AdventHealth Nicholson Center in
Celebration. Since opening in 2001, the center has trained more than 50,000 professionals, ranging from surgeons to medical students to administrators, from all over the world. Named after Orlando philanthropists Tony and Sonja Nicholson, who donated $5 million to create the center, the robotic surgery training facility has come a long way since it was formed in borrowed space in what was then Florida Hospital Celebration. The Nicholson Center moved in 2011 to its current location, a 54,000-square-foot building that includes auditorium, meeting, event and classroom space as well as surgery training bays with adjacent conference rooms for observation. “When we moved in, we were rattling around here because we’d never had so much space,” said Roger Smith, the Nicholson Center’s chief technology officer. “So for the first couple of years, we were operating one or two events at a time, just like we always had, and then it gradually, like a snowball going downhill, i4Biz.com | JUNE 2019 | 25
