remote-surgery
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Brian Miller
Brian Miller is the CEO of Sovato, the Santa Barbara company building the first platform to let health systems deploy and scale remote robotic surgery. An electrical engineer turned roboticist with a PhD from Northwestern in haptics, he spent his first job at Computer Motion writing software for the AESOP and ZEUS robots and watched the 2001 Operation Lindbergh, the first transatlantic remote surgery. Twenty-three years at Intuitive Surgical followed, where he rose from control-systems analyst to Chief Digital Officer and Head of Digital and AI Strategy. In April 2026 he returned to the frontier he started on, taking Sovato from early market development toward its first patient programs in 2027.
XCath Robotics
XCath Robotics is a Houston-based medical robotics company building next-generation endovascular robotic systems and steerable smart guidewires to treat stroke, brain aneurysms and other neurovascular conditions. Its flagship Iris system is the only endovascular robot in development capable of intracranial navigation, and the company is racing toward a clinical telerobot that could let a specialist perform a brain-clot removal on a patient hundreds of miles away.
Sovato
Sovato is a Santa Barbara health-tech company building the first comprehensive, system-agnostic platform for remote robotic surgery and procedures - what the industry calls telesurgery. Co-founded by surgical-robotics pioneer Yulun Wang and healthcare strategist Cynthia Perazzo, Sovato lets a skilled surgeon operate a robotic system from hundreds or thousands of miles away, aiming to extend top surgical care to patients regardless of where they live. The company has raised $41M across its rounds and helped enable the longest-distance telesurgery ever completed.