Glasgow's Royal Hospital for Children has become what it describes as the first dedicated children's hospital in the world to own a Versius Plus surgical robot exclusively for paediatric care1,2.
The system, made by CMR Surgical, was funded by a donation of more than £1.5 million from the Coldstones Charitable Trust — the largest single gift Glasgow Children's Hospital Charity has received. The funding was channelled through the charity's innovation arm, Hi Scotland, and will support the launch of a dedicated robotic surgery programme for children.
The Versius system is designed to be modular and adaptable, enabling surgeons to carry out robotic-assisted keyhole procedures for complex conditions including cancer, urology, thoracic, abdominal and gastrointestinal cases. Robotic surgery can offer greater precision while reducing pain, scarring and recovery times for young patients, according to the hospital.
The hospital's ownership follows an evaluation phase during which more than 30 procedures were carried out using the robot.
Michael Jacovides, a consultant paediatric surgeon and clinical lead for the robotic surgery programme, said robotic-assisted surgery will increasingly be part of caring for children and that it is already available for children in Glasgow. He added that the service is being developed to cover more conditions and to offer it to more children and babies across Scotland. "We are proud to have established Glasgow as a leader in this field, and we are working with partners nationally and internationally so these technologies become more widely used," Jacovides said.
ANALYSIS The deployment is narrow — a single surgical robot at one hospital — but it marks a concrete case of robotic-assisted AI-adjacent technology moving from adult surgical suites into dedicated paediatric ownership, where the smaller anatomy and higher procedural complexity of child patients present distinct engineering demands.