MINI REVIEW article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Health Economics
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1672583
This article is part of the Research TopicReal-World Evidence and its Impact on Sustainable Health Financing, Economics and OutcomesView all 4 articles
Health Technology Assessment of Surgical Robots: A Mini-Review of a Rapidly Evolving Field
Provisionally accepted
- 1College of Pharmacy/Southern Institute of Pharmacoeconomics and Health Technology Assessment, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China
- 2Peking University National School of Development, Beijing, China
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Background: Surgical robots enhance precision and enable minimally invasive procedures but pose challenges for traditional Health Technology Assessment (HTA) due to high costs, organizational disruption, and rapid iteration. Core Content: This review first reviews the development trajectory of surgical robots and their applications in modern surgery. It then elaborates on the fundamental definition and value dimensions of HTA, highlighting the IDEAL framework specifically designed for evaluating complex surgical innovations and its tailored recommendations for surgical robots. Then provides a detailed analysis of specific challenges encountered in HTA of surgical robots. Discussion: This review thoroughly examines two core controversies in current assessment paradigms: the debate over the roles of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) versus real-world evidence (RWE) in the evidence hierarchy, and the paradigm tension between traditional cost-effectiveness analysis and the broader Value-Based Healthcare (VBHC) approach. Key identified research gaps include: the lack of standardized HTA frameworks accounting for medical device characteristics, insufficient long-term patient-centered outcomes and system-level impact data. Looking ahead, the assessment of surgical robots is evolving toward dynamic, iterative "living" HTA models, urgently requiring new paradigms to evaluate AI-integrated intelligent systems and ultimately striving toward a comprehensive assessment system integrating broad value dimensions with a global perspective. Conclusion: Static HTA methods, primarily designed for pharmaceuticals, are inadequate for complex, rapidly evolving platforms like surgical robots. Establishing a more dynamic, holistic, and standardized assessment paradigm is crucial to ensure safe, effective, and cost-efficient benefit for patients and society.
Keywords: Surgical robots, Health Technology Assessment, Value-BasedHealthcare, economic evaluation, Challenges, Real-world evidence
Received: 24 Jul 2025; Accepted: 30 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhong, Zeng, Zhang and Liu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Tiantian Zhang, ztt_84@126.com
Gordon G Liu, gordonliu@nsd.pku.edu.cn
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.