China's Medical Insurance Authority Holds Expert Forum on Surgical Robots

China's National Healthcare Security Administration organized an expert forum on surgical robots on the morning of September 11, 2026. Representatives from seven domestic and international surgical robot manufacturers, including Hokai Precision, Shanghai MicroPort, Medtronic, Intuitive Fosun, Shenzhen Jingfeng, Beijing TINAVI and Stryker, took part, along with representatives from five hospitals: Guangdong Provincial People's Hospital, Peking University People's Hospital, Beijing Tiantan Hospital, Jishuitan Hospital and Beijing Tongren Hospital.

The meeting noted that the use of surgical robots is accelerating worldwide, and that China has become the world's most important production and application base for surgical robots. The National Healthcare Security Administration has included robotic arm-assisted operations in its guidelines for establishing medical service price items, local medical insurance bureaus have successively issued related charging standards, and reform of medical insurance payment methods has created a separate grouping for surgical robots.

Participants held that surgical robots remain generally at an early stage of innovative development. They offer advantages including precision, stability, resistance to fatigue, fewer errors, multiple degrees of freedom and multiple viewing angles, while facing challenges in pricing, operator training, supporting consumables and instruments, force feedback, field of view and application scenarios. Medical institutions should realistically and scientifically choose traditional procedures, laparoscopy or surgical robots, adhere to patient benefit as the primary measure of clinical value, and avoid forced use where capabilities are insufficient, operators are unfamiliar or the procedure is unsuitable, so as to prevent deliberately performing more robot-assisted surgeries in order to increase charges.

Participants supported the National Healthcare Security Administration's comprehensive value evaluation of medical services using real-world data, and looked forward to using objective real-world data to identify advantageous scenarios for surgical robots and to uncover problems and shortcomings.

The meeting held that the functions of surgical robots need to continue expanding, from high-concentration fields such as urology, orthopedics and general surgery toward more precise efforts in areas including neurosurgery and interventional care, linking with technologies such as brain-computer interfaces, and moving in step with frontier technologies such as intelligent robots and artificial intelligence, advancing toward the goal of autonomous automation of some or all functions. Relevant parties will support and cooperate with the National Healthcare Security Administration in exploring and forming data standards for surgical robot positioning and navigation and for human-robot interaction.

Participants appreciated the National Healthcare Security Administration's establishment of pricing for remote surgery, holding that in border areas, remote islands, and at the scenes of natural disasters and emergencies, remote robot-assisted surgery will become an important means and pathway for emergency rescue and inclusive medical security.