Cambridge, UK and San Jose, California – 16 March 2026, CMR Surgical (“CMR”), the global surgical robotics company, today announced its participation in NVIDIA’s Physical AI healthcare robotics initiative, unveiled at NVIDIA GTC. As part of the initiative, CMR contributed the majority of surgical data used to create Open-H — the world’s largest open dataset for healthcare robotics — designed to train the next generation of intelligent surgical systems.
The dataset combines real-world surgical video, robotic telemetry and multimodal data from leading healthcare and robotics organisations. CMR contributed close to 500 hours anonymised surgical data from its Versius Surgical Robotic System, representing the largest share of surgical data in the initiative.
Open‑H underpins Isaac GR00T‑H, the first open vision‑language‑action model for healthcare robotics, designed to enable robotic systems to better interpret complex surgical environments and tasks. These technologies aim to accelerate the development of intelligent robotic systems while maintaining the rigorous safety and clinical oversight required in healthcare.
Building the Foundations of Physical AI in Surgery
Robotic surgery has already enabled millions of minimally invasive procedures worldwide, helping surgeons perform complex operations with greater precision and control. However, advancing surgical robotics further requires new approaches to how robotic systems learn from clinical experience.
With NVIDIA Physical AI infrastructure the ecosystem has a platform that allows robotic systems to be trained and evaluated in simulated environments before deployment, helping accelerate development while maintaining high safety standards.
CMR is contributing real-world surgical data to the effort and is also using NVIDIA Cosmos-H to generate physically accurate synthetic surgical data and evaluate new robotic policies for the future development of the Versius platform.
Enhancing Surgeon Capabilities Through Data and AI
CMR designed Versius as a digitally enabled surgical platform capable of capturing meaningful surgical data during procedures. By contributing anonymised data to initiatives such as Open‑H, the company aims to support broader innovation across the healthcare robotics community.
In the future, Physical AI technologies could enable surgical systems to better understand surgical workflows, assist surgeons with complex tasks and support advanced training and simulation environments. This can help democratise access to minimally invasive surgery and ultimately close the gap of five billion people globally who lack access to safe and affordable surgery.
These technologies are designed to augment surgical expertise, helping clinicians deliver high-quality care more consistently and efficiently. As healthcare systems worldwide face increasing surgical demand and workforce constraints, innovations that enhance surgeon capabilities may also help expand access to minimally invasive procedures for more patients.
Chris Fryer, Chief Technology Officer at CMR Surgical, commented: “Surgical robotics generates a rich understanding of how procedures are performed. By contributing real‑world surgical data to collaborative initiatives like Open‑H, we are helping build the foundations for the next generation of intelligent surgical systems. Because Versius is the most software-driven robot on the market, we are well-placed to share our data with the wider ecosystem.
Our focus is on technologies that support surgeons and expand access to minimally invasive surgery. Combining clinical data with advances in AI and simulation creates a powerful opportunity to accelerate innovation responsibly.”
David Niewolny, Head of Business Development for Healthcare and Medical Technology at NVIDIA said: “The next generation of surgical robotics will be powered by data, simulation and AI working together. By responsibly contributing surgical data and training open models on NVIDIA’s physical AI platform, medical technology leaders like CMR Surgical are accelerating a new generation of intelligent robotic systems that can assist surgeons, scale surgical expertise and ultimately expand access to high-quality care.”
Press Office, CMR SurgicalE [email protected]
The Versius Surgical Robotic System is designed to support surgeons in performing minimally invasive procedures across a range of specialties.
Versius features a modular, portable design that integrates into existing operating room environments and surgical workflows. Its open console design allows surgeons to communicate easily with the operating team while maintaining ergonomic control of the system.
Through its wider digital ecosystem — including surgical video, robotic telemetry and clinical data — Versius captures insights that support continuous learning and surgical innovation.
CMR Surgical (CMR) is a global medical devices company dedicated to transforming surgery with Versius, a next-generation surgical robot.
Headquartered in Cambridge, United Kingdom, CMR is committed to working with surgeons, surgical teams and hospital partners, to provide an optimal tool to make robotic minimally invasive surgery universally accessible and affordable. With Versius, we are on a mission to redefine the surgical robotics market with practical, innovative technology and data that can improve surgical care.
Founded in 2014, CMR Surgical is a private limited company backed by an international shareholder base.
