Give the surgeon more precision.

Smaller openings, steadier hands

Intuitive starts from a belief about patients and a problem for surgeons. The first line of its company page reads: we believe minimally invasive care is life-enhancing care. Its own cardiac release shows the size of what remains: more than two million patients a year undergo open heart surgery, most of them through a cut that splits the breastbone. The robot exists to make the smaller route practical. In June 2026 the head of the Korean subsidiary, Yongbum Choi, put its job in two plain points: it stops the surgeon's hand from trembling and it helps the surgeon see. He added a reason that matters in Korea: as doctors become scarcer, robotic surgery is becoming an alternative.

We are at an exciting time with a significant opportunity to advance the work that customers care most about, the Quintuple Aim: improving patient outcomes, enhancing patient and care team experience, expanding patient access to care, and ultimately lowering the total cost to treat.

Dave Rosa · President, on being named chief executive · Intuitive release announcing the CEO transition · 2025-05-15

What sets Intuitive apart is how much it builds around the machine. The surgeon sits at a console, sees the operating field in 3D and moves instruments held by robotic arms at the bedside; the robot follows the surgeon's hands and does not choose the operation. Around that console the company sells instruments that have limited lives and must be replaced as they expire or wear out in use, service contracts, simulators, training courses and software that records each case. Its yardstick is what Dave Rosa, chief executive since July 2025, calls the Quintuple Aim. Hospitals pay through system purchases or leases, followed by recurring instruments and service.

Why the bet is moving now

Three things moved at once. The fifth generation, da Vinci 5, was cleared in the U.S. in March 2024 and in Korea that October, the second country in the world. By the company's account it brings more than 150 design changes, 10,000 times the computing power of the previous model, and Force Feedback, which lets the surgeon feel push and pull at the tip of the instrument. Use reached scale: about 3,153,000 operations were performed on da Vinci systems in 2025, up about 18% on 2024, and the installed base reached 11,710 systems on 30 June 2026. And the company returned to heart surgery. Cardiac surgery was the first specialty cleared on the original da Vinci in 2002, but Intuitive says the limits of its first platforms and the lack of a global training and support network made it shift its focus. With those barriers addressed, da Vinci 5 won U.S. clearance for nine selected thoracoscopically assisted cardiac procedures using non-Force Feedback instruments in January 2026 and a European CE mark in September 2026.

One hospital's programme, step by step

Follow an illustrative Korean hospital through the four steps the company describes. It prepares: leaders and surgeons agree which operations suit the robot, and Intuitive's area sales managers, in the words of a Seoul posting, present to the whole buying team through a capital equipment purchase. It trains: surgeons practise on the SimNow simulator, which offers more than 65 exercises, and attend courses taught by experienced surgeons, while the theatre team learns the system on site. It operates: the surgeon controls the instruments, the bedside and anaesthesia teams work around the patient, and Intuitive's clinical sales staff support cases in the operating room. It reviews: case video and data flow into My Intuitive and Intuitive Hub, where they can be shared with a trainee or a colleague.

At every step a person's judgement stays in charge. Which patient should have robotic surgery, and whether it beats laparoscopy for a given disease, are clinical calls. In Korea they are also a question of money, because national insurance lists robotic surgery as a non-covered procedure that patients pay for themselves.

Robotic surgery and AI are developing toward extending the surgeon's abilities, rather than replacing the surgeon.

Catherine Mohr · President, Intuitive Foundation (former Intuitive vice president) · Interview in a Korean business daily, in Korean; English translation of published Korean text · 2026-04-15

Most of the outcome evidence behind the pitch is the company's own. The up to 43% lower tissue force figure comes from preclinical testing in a company footnote, and the Korean savings figures presented in June 2026 are Intuitive's analysis. A commercial signal is adoption: hospitals keep placing systems, and in Korea the company says the contract rate for its da Vinci Care Plan service plan stood at 100% in early 2025.

A role in Seoul sits inside this programme logic. Whether the title says sales, marketing, training or access, the work is to make robotic surgery routine in Korean hospitals: one surgeon, one specialty and one payment decision at a time.

Three platforms, sold to hospitals

Intuitive sells to hospitals, and its main surgical platform is the da Vinci multiport system. The surgeon works at a console with a magnified 3D view, and a patient cart at the bedside carries the camera and wristed instruments that follow the surgeon's hands. da Vinci 5 adds Force Feedback with compatible instruments and connects case video and data to Intuitive's learning and review tools. Of the 468 da Vinci systems placed worldwide in Q2 2026, 246 were da Vinci 5. On the April 2026 earnings call, management reported an installed da Vinci 5 base of almost 1,500 systems, used by almost 13,000 surgeons since launch. These are different measures: quarterly placements, systems in place, and surgeons who have used them.

A second da Vinci, the single port system SP, operates through one incision, and it matters most in Korea. Korea recorded the most SP procedures of any country in 2024, according to the company's 20th anniversary material, and on three earnings calls between October 2024 and April 2026 Intuitive's leaders named Korea as a driver of SP growth. In April 2026 the chief financial officer said the SP stapler would move into a measured launch in Korea and Europe in the second quarter.

Ion is a different machine for a different doctor. It is a robotic bronchoscopy system: a pulmonologist steers a thin, shape-sensing catheter deep into the lung to take a biopsy of a suspicious nodule, with the goal of finding lung cancer sooner. Launched in the U.S. in 2019, it reached about 800 systems and at least 200,000 procedures worldwide by the end of 2024, and 1,096 systems by 30 June 2026. Korea became its fourth market in August 2025.

A further layer is software. My Intuitive gives surgeons their own case data and video, SimNow lets them practise, and Intuitive Hub records, edits and shares case video and links surgeons by telepresence during an operation. A Seoul posting names Case Insights among the digital solutions it sells and describes a Digital Sales Representative whose job is to sell these products to hospitals and teach surgeons to use them. In April 2026 the CEO described them as the base of a digital and AI road map meant to add telesurgery, deeper decision support and augmented dexterity.

Korean hospitals as showcase customers

The named customers in Korea are teaching hospitals, and what they announce is adoption and teaching. Samsung Medical Center in Seoul says it performed Asia's first da Vinci 5 operation on 16 December 2024, runs nine da Vinci systems, performed about 3,400 robotic operations in 2023 and has been an Intuitive Epicenter for urologic cancer since 2022. Korea University Anam Hospital was named an Epicenter in June 2026; it also describes itself as the first in Asia to introduce da Vinci 5, reports at least 3,000 robotic operations in urology, and uses Intuitive Hub to let surgeons abroad watch and mentor its cases in real time.

Outside Seoul the pattern repeats. Ulsan University Hospital was the first Korean hospital to install Ion, reached 100 Ion procedures in March 2026, and from 1 May 2026 became Korea's first Ion case observation site, with visits from Taiwanese and Japanese clinicians planned. At Pusan National University Hospital a thoracic surgeon reached 500 robotic operations and in August 2026 used Intuitive Hub to let surgeons at other hospitals watch a lung cancer operation live.

Read these as signs of adoption, as each hospital announced them: case counts, designations and firsts. Two hospitals each call themselves first in Asia with da Vinci 5, a reminder that these are claims made by customers. The one measured result in a company case study is operational: a U.S. hospital, Salina Regional Health Center, reported about $90,000 in avoided costs from better instrument inventory in 2024.

What it replaces, and who else is selling

In its annual filing Intuitive lists its competition broadly: open surgery, conventional laparoscopy, drug therapies, radiation and other emerging approaches. Robots are now the sharper threat. Medtronic's Hugo, which its maker says was approved in Korea in 2024, saw its first U.S. commercial cases at the start of 2026, and Medtronic pitches it to surgeons as another choice. Johnson & Johnson's Ottava was authorised in the U.S. in July 2026. In heart surgery the rival is often a catheter rather than a robot: Rosa said in April 2026 that some patients benefit from minimally invasive cardiac surgery and some from percutaneous transcatheter approaches, and the cardiac procedures cleared in January are core businesses for heart device makers such as Boston Scientific, Abbott and Edwards Lifesciences.

A Korea hire carries more than one product. The sales roles sell systems and keep them busy, the marketing roles build specialties around da Vinci, SP and Ion, and the digital role sells the software layer. Knowing which platform fits which hospital and specialty is likely to be the first thing a Korean surgeon tests.