US Patent Issued to Intuitive Surgical Operations on Feb. 24 for "Teleoperated surgical system with surgical instrument wear tracking" (California Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Feb. 24 -- United States Patent no. 12,558,174, issued on Feb. 24, was assigned to Intuitive Surgical Operations Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.).

"Teleoperated surgical system with surgical instrument wear tracking" was invented by Pushkar Hingwe (Los Altos, Calif.), Amy E. Kerdok (San Jose, Calif.), William C. Nowlin (Los Altos Hills, Calif.) and David W. Robinson (Los Altos, Calif.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A surgical method is provided, comprising: providing an information structure in a computer readable storage device that associates an indication of surgeon skill level in at least one surgical activity performed using the surgical instrument with a surgical instrument act...