Cash boost for vision-restoring eye-surgery robot

Researchers have been awarded £2.2 million to develop a flexible surgical robot for delivering vision-restoring therapies into the eye.
A collaboration between researchers from King’s College London (KCL), Moorfields Eye Hospital (MEH) and the University of Kent (UoK), led by Professor Christos Bergeles (KCL) and Professor Lyndon da Cruz (MEH), has been awarded £2.2 million by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) to develop a surgical robot that can deliver therapies into the veins in the eye.
Retinal vascular diseases affect more than 200 million people worldwide and are a leading cause of blindness. 
New therapies have shown promise in early trials to restore vision. However, these treatments must be delivered directly to retinal blood vessels that are thinner than a human hair. This is almost impossible to do by hand because of natural hand tremors, small patient movements and limitations of current tools.
The team has developed a new eye-surgery robot to address this challenge. The robot is flexible and can bend like an elephant's trunk. This lets surgeons approach the retina from different angles and reach blood vessels in ways impossible by hand. Furthermore, for robot guidance at these microscopic scales, the team will use sophisticated miniaturised optical devices being developed by the Kent team of Prof Adrian Podoleanu, Dr Michael Hughes and Dr Manuel Marques.
The current version of the robot precisely positions a surgical light during eye operations. Over the three-year project, funded through an NIHR Invention for Innovation Product Development Award, the team will test the robot in five patients to assess its safety, usability and performance. 
They will also expand the robot’s functions to deliver drugs directly into tiny retinal veins and prepare the regulatory documentation needed to get the robot approved to treat blocked blood vessels with the ‘clot-busting’ drug t-PA.
The team plans to eventually deliver the technology to the NHS and beyond through Revitalise, a spinout company under development. 
Revitalise completed the London Institute for Healthcare Engineering’s MedTech Venture Builder, and will de-risk their platform through ISO certification, clinical evaluation and regulatory readiness. 
The spinout was recently named one of five companies to watch at LSI USA 2026, where LSI’s intelligence platform, Compass AI, publicly recognised it for its translational ambition and commercial potential.