ArticleJournal of robotic surgery2026
Evolution of surgical robotics innovation in China: a patent landscape analysis, 2003-2025.
Article in Journal of robotic surgery, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Surgical robots are high-end medical equipment that deeply integrates surgery with mechanical engineering, control science, materials science, and information science. This study characterises the technological structure and innovation landscape of China's surgical robotics field through patent bibliometric analysis, identifying its developmental stages and weak links so as to inform research-and-development planning and industry-academia-hospital collaboration. Chinese invention patents granted in the field of surgical robotics were retrieved from the China National Key Industry Patent Information Service Platform. 8,781 patents with application years 2003-2025 were included. Descriptive and evolutionary analyses were performed across five dimensions: annual trends, International Patent Classification (IPC), innovation entities and collaboration, application fields, and key technology directions. Annual applications rose sharply from 562 in 2017 to a peak of 1,585 in 2021. The primary IPC subclass A61B34 (surgical robot systems) dominated with 4,809 patents (54.77%), followed by A61B17 (surgical instruments), A61B1 (endoscopes) and B25J9 (manipulators), whereas supporting subclasses such as image processing (G06T7, 1.29%) and force/torque measurement (G01L, 0.33%) each accounted for less than 2%. Enterprises accounted for 69.53% of first applicants and hospitals/medical institutions for only 6.49%; cross-institutional joint applications comprised merely 5.51%. Orthopaedics (712 patents), laparoscopic minimally invasive surgery (711), and percutaneous puncture/biopsy/ablation (670) were the leading application fields, with 65.66% of patents being generic-platform oriented. Among the patents with a recorded legal status, 91.5% remained in force, providing an aggregate quality indicator. Vision/imaging and display was the densest technology direction (1,984 patents, 22.59%), whereas force feedback/haptic perception (7.27%), artificial intelligence (2.59%) and single-port techniques (0.76%) remained under-represented. China's surgical robotics innovation has shifted from technology tracking to autonomous expansion, with an enterprise-led, whole-system-driven landscape largely established. Persistent weaknesses in core components and force sensing, low hospital patenting, and lagging frontier layouts call for strengthening fundamental links, medical-engineering collaboration mechanisms and differentiated technology directions.
Indexed as
Identifiers
42821133What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.