Asensus Surgical, Inc. (AMEX:ASXC) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

RK Ramakanth: Yes, thanks for that. And then on the pediatric install that you had, which is obviously, you know, trying to kind of expand the — expand beyond, the other indications. How attractive is it to some of these hospitals? And also to, you know, are there any conversations in the hospitals that already have some of your initial adopters. How are they thinking about you know, extending it into the pediatric surgical sweeps as well?

Anthony Fernando: Yes. So, RK, I think, you know, great points. I’ll talk about two things. One, I’ll talk about the existing site, you know, there are — I would say, a few existing sites, that happened to have a pediatric specialty within the hospital. You know, in cases like that, obviously, we can consider it. But many sites didn’t consider, Senhance before for pediatrics, because pediatrics, you know, it was somewhat separated and they looked at Senhance for other procedures. But now with pediatric, I think it is somewhat of an underserved space, and then given the unique nature of Senhance, the pediatric surgical units and the surgeons are looking to it saying, okay, here’s a device that have significantly smaller instruments and have certain features like haptic feedback and the digital capabilities and they’re seeing the value of what it could do in pediatric, especially in the U.S., because we’ve been doing pediatric cases in Europe, for some time now.

And, you know, at this — the more we share the data from some of these congresses and surgeons presenting about their case performance, those get kind of that, that’s also influencing especially the U.S. surgeons to start a pediatric program. So we just announced one and we are continuing to build on that, but we’ve had pretty good inbound interest from pediatric surgeons from different hospitals saying that, you know, they are seeing interest in the smaller instruments and they feel that this is something that they can adopt, so we are having those conversations now. But pediatrics in general tend to be the space between pediatrics and other surgical decisions and choices and even surgical centers. So that’s the reason why it’s not all in one.

RK Ramakanth: So, this is my last question, talking about feedback. You said that LUNA was demonstrated in Melbourne at a conference. So what’s the feedback you received when this was done? And how much of the learnings from that presentation are you include — are you incorporating into your treatment studies and also future studies that you need to do as you get the approval for marketing LUNA?

Anthony Fernando: Yes, RK. So, you know, when — what we meant by sharing LUNA, it was a video presentation of the LUNA system, not a physical system presentation. I just want to clarify, that in Melbourne, but the team is making extremely good progress on the R&D front. And, you know, our goal is to perform the — this animal lab or preclinical lab at the end of this year where surgeons could do a complete procedure. So that will kind of be the key gating milestone, where we can get a surgeon to do a complete procedure. And once that milestone is met, then we would start to proceed to doing all the final validation verification, kind of, tests to prepare the regulatory submission. But overall, the feedback from the surgeon we’ve been engaging with surgeons for the past, I would say couple of years, specifically on the LUNA program and continuing to evolve the system, but I think when surgeons look at the system at what it can deliver and how it’s going to help them perform surgery with, you know, 5 millimeter instruments and having the ability to use 5 millimeter fully wristed instruments and straight instruments, you know, low as 3 millimeter.

So that kind of options and also some other things they like, on Senhance very much, you know, eye tracking and hectic feedback and independent arms, et cetera. So when they see that’s already been done and they can also see the improvements that’s kind of what’s driving a high level of interest, yes.