What does analytics mean to Intuitive Surgical?

I think analytics has multiple components in it. As you may know, the majority of our systems are real-time connected to the Internet today. I think over 90% of systems are online. They report back information to us mostly around the system performance itself, what it is itself is doing, rather than, say, patient information. That data can be turned into insights for the company and for our customers and we have been doing that for some time now. So there’s that type of analytics.

Going forward, I think that as our computational structures get more powerful, we can bring some of that intelligence more real-time. So rather than offline insights, you can start generating real-time insights. That’s a multi-year pathway. I think it’s interesting and challenging. I think there’s long-term potential in it. But we’re moving down that pathway, making sure that we have good access and fast access and low latency access to our devices in the field, and then bringing to bear information that can help surgeons as they’re performing the procedure. And you’ll see from us in future years a series of products that come out using that set of kind of digital pipeline.