Joseph Nathan, MD, MSc is the Co-Founder, President and Chief Medical Officer at ForSight Robotics. Dr. Nathan has over 20 years of experience in medical innovation. Previously, he directed healthcare commercialization on the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, and served as Director of Latest Ventures for the Technion’s Alfred Mann Institute, a $100M three way partnership incubating medical startups. Dr. Nathan earned a BSc in Biotechnology Engineering, MSc in Industrial Engineering, and MD, all from the Technion. Dr. Nathan also accomplished 3 years of ophthalmic surgery residence at Rambam Hospital.
ForSight Robotics is pioneering advancements in eye surgery with a mission to enhance global access to high-quality ophthalmic care. Thousands and thousands of individuals worldwide experience poor vision and face barriers to excellent surgical procedure. ForSight Robotics goals to deal with these challenges with ORYOM™, the primary hybrid intraocular robotic ophthalmic platform, designed to boost and expand the capabilities of ophthalmic surgery on a world scale.
What inspired you to co-found ForSight Robotics, and the way did your background as each a physician and engineer shape the vision for the corporate?
While studying to be an engineer on the Technion, Israel’s Institute of Technology, I used to be fascinated by the intricacies of multidisciplinary technologies and the way it might help patients. After receiving my BSc and MSc in engineering, I pursued my MD degree followed by three years of residency in ophthalmic surgery. While in residency, I learned first-hand the high level of precision required of surgeons to operate effectively and the toll these highly technical surgeries takes on surgeons. I also found that it took a long time to master the high level of skill needed to supply probably the most accurate surgical care, and infrequently heard ophthalmic surgeons say that they “operate like robots” as a result of the repetitive nature of ophthalmic procedures, just like the removal of cataracts. In ophthalmology, precision and accuracy are crucial to making sure secure surgeries. With my engineering background and experience within the operating room, I knew there was a greater technique to deliver more accurate patient care, ensure higher outcomes, and ease surgeon burnout. Thus, the thought for ForSight Robotics was born.
I knew we would have liked a robust founding team to bring this vision to life. I approached Professor Moshe Shoham, with whom I had worked during my time on the Technion and who had founded the robotics laboratory at each the Technion and at Columbia. Because the founding father of Mazor Robotics, he brings a long time of technical knowledge and experience constructing advanced systems. We also partnered with robotics expert Daniel Glozman, PhD, who was considered one of Prof. Shoham’s first students, and together we founded ForSight Robotics.
Why did you select ophthalmic surgery as the main target for ForSight Robotics, and the way do you see robotics transforming this field in the subsequent decade?
Globally, at the very least 1.1 billion people have preventable vision impairment, and inside this patient group, cataracts are the leading condition causing impairment or blindness in over 600 million patients. Over 30 million cataract surgeries are performed annually, making them probably the most common procedure worldwide. Within the US, there are 32M patients in need of surgery to deal with cataracts, yet only 11K surgeons are trained on this field, leaving a large accessibility gap for patients in need of surgical care. Due to global market need and our profound robotics expertise, we focused on constructing our ORYOM™ Platform (Hebrew for daylight)—the primary robotic ophthalmic platform to treat cataract and other widespread eye diseases—to deal with this ongoing problem, expand ophthalmic surgery access, and shut a growing surgical care gap.
Regarding transformation, the robotics industry is at an inflection point. AI and automation have accelerated the advancement of technology, and public perception of medical robots is at an all-time high. We see patients searching for advanced technological care, and surgeons preferring to make use of surgical robotics in other specialties – and there’s also high interest from ophthalmologists who want their field to “catch up” with the technological advances they see in other specialties which have already had robotic surgery for years. Constructing on the growing momentum, ForSight has built an incredible team of technical experts and investors to assist us reach our highest potential. This includes the recent addition of “the daddy of robotic surgery,” Dr. Fred Moll (founding father of Intuitive Surgical), to our Board of Directors, our ongoing support from board advisor Rony Abovitz, founding father of MAKO, leading ophthalmic surgeons that make up our Clinical Advisory Board, and our VC partners. The sky is the limit for the potential of medical robotics, and our vision is to harness the facility of robotics, AI, and automation to rework the surgical robotics space.
ForSight Robotics goals to “democratize access to ophthalmic surgeries.” How do you define success in achieving this goal?
Ultimately, we may have reached our goal when the demand for ophthalmic surgeons eases, and robotic surgery is obtainable globally. To drive success, we’re focused on three key metrics.
First, ophthalmic training time needs to be reduced, and the training curve needs to be shortened. It takes at the very least 15 years for ophthalmic surgeons to attain peak surgical performance. This is just too long of a runway to deal with the growing demand for cataract and other eye surgeries in aging adults. With ForSight’s ORYOM™ Platform, surgeons can adopt the technology in a couple of sessions and operate with the platform shortly thereafter, thus significantly decreasing the training time.
Second, two-thirds of ophthalmic surgeons experience physical health issues brought on by poor ergonomics. Issues resembling musculoskeletal, back, and neck pain result in 15% of eye surgeons retiring early. ForSight’s ORYOM™ Platform scales down a surgeon’s hand movements, increasing accuracy and ergonomic comfort that decreases a surgeon’s cognitive and physical stress and fatigue, thus increasing their operating profession.
Third, we aim to extend a provider’s surgical throughput by thrice. Straight away, a full cataract surgery from start to complete takes around quarter-hour. Surgeons work across the clock within the operating room to finish as many surgeries as possible in a given day to maximise their time within the operating room. ForSight’s ORYOM™ Platform decreases the general procedure time, thus increasing the variety of surgeries that may be accomplished in a single day and over time, increasing the variety of cases that may be achieved.
Your technology is described as offering “superhuman” precision and scalability. Are you able to explain how AI and robotics enable this capability in practice?
Our robotic surgery platform enhances the operating process by utilizing AI-based algorithms and micromechanics to deliver micron-level precision. In the course of the procedure, the platform provides actionable insights to surgeons through embedded sensors, cameras, and kinematics to enhance overall surgical technique. ForSight’s ORYOM™ Platform is built with 14 degrees of freedom to deliver complete access for surgeons to succeed in every point with the human eye. Future iterations of the platform will allow for the performance of each anterior and posterior procedures, furthering ForSight’s vision and impact.
Robotics allows us to dial in on a particular movement and standardize it across all patients. By providing real-time 3D image guidance and augmentation of the procedures, surgeons can have a more holistic view of the procedure and improve their execution. Along with real-time analytics, we have scaled down the hand movements required for the procedure, reduced the hand tremors, and incorporated no-fly zones to extend overall surgical accuracy and precision.
What makes the ORYOM™ Platform unique in comparison with other robotic surgery solutions currently available?
The ORYOM™ Platform is the primary robotic ophthalmic platform for cataract and other widespread eye diseases, which provides significant benefits for each patients and surgeons. To handle the physical stress surgeons experience during surgery and forestall early retirement as a result of physical issues, we focused on creating ergonomic features that address these stressors, including screen/table positioning, how a surgeon handles the tools, and built-in neutral positioning. We have also embedded haptic capabilities, including vibrations, resistance, and other sensory aspects, into the technology for an enhanced surgical experience.
Other unique features of the ORYOM™ Platform include reducing the general procedure time, which enables practitioners to operate on more patients in a single day and perform more cataract surgeries over time. Moreover, to make sure mass adoption amongst surgeons, we have created a training program that permits practitioners to coach on the platform and operate with the technology with a significantly shorter learning curve, while maintaining high surgical accuracy.
How does ForSight Robotics plan to deal with the disparity in access to eye surgeons between affluent and low-income countries?
As a world company, we aim to expand ophthalmic surgery for all. We’re targeting the US market first because, historically, technology adopted within the US tends to steer to success in other markets. At the identical time, we’re taking a look at countries resembling India, China, and the Middle East that are investing of their healthcare systems to beat the dearth of infrastructure. By targeting these markets, we will expand access and resources to countries which have higher populations needing care. Further, by increasing a current surgeon’s capability, we will expand access to a greater population of patients.
With cataracts being a number one reason for blindness globally, what’s ForSight Robotics’ long-term vision for eradicating preventable blindness?
In creating the ORYOM™ Platform, our goal is to grow and scale our robotic surgery platform to succeed in more practitioners and in turn, more patients. The ORYOM™ Platform was developed from the bottom up, ensuring that our robotic systems are built to succeed in every point inside the eye. We’re starting by targeting cataract, probably the most common medical procedure with over 600M patients worldwide, after which seek to expand to deal with other eye diseases and tackle other procedures that demand high dexterity from surgeons. In the longer term, we may even advance automation in robotic surgery in an effort to increase global access to quality surgical eye care.
What role do partnerships with hospitals and medical professionals play within the adoption of the ORYOM™ Platform?
Collaboration with hospitals, clinics, and practitioners enables us to supply the perfect surgical care to vision-impaired patients. This 12 months, Dr. Fred Moll, the founding father of Intuitive Surgical, joined our board of directors to support ForSight’s next growth phase, including scaling the corporate globally. Working alongside Dr. Moll and our expert team, we’re constructing strategic partnerships inside the healthcare system to supply vision-saving ophthalmic surgery to patients.
As of February 2025, the ORYOM™ Platform has been optimized and validated by over two dozen surgeons who’ve successfully performed over 200 complete robotic cataract procedures on an animal eye model. We’re working closely with leading ophthalmic surgeons worldwide to be certain that our technology answers surgeons’ needs.
What are your thoughts on Nvidia’s and OpenAI’s recent advancements in robotics, and the way might these developments impact ForSight’s future?
It’s an exciting time to be a robotics founder. Recent announcements from Nvidia and OpenAI underscore how rapidly AI is transforming robotics and increasing investment across the industry. As robotic technology advances, AI and automation will proceed to play an important role in developing ForSight’s technology, with the goal of fully automating repetitive surgical tasks in the longer term.
Nvidia’s robotics are trained using large open-source LLMs together with hundreds of thousands of hours of simulations and real-world data. It is a huge breakthrough in training machines on perceived environments for driving and humanoids, allowing embodied AI to progress faster. For surgical robotics, we’ll see an increased use of AI to research large amounts of real-world data while training future robotic systems in simulated environments.
All of those developments profit the sphere of robotics as a complete, and may have a positive impact on the sphere of robotic surgery as well. The impressive speed at which these major corporations are developing novel AI tech may have a net positive impact on so many industries, and may even improve our goals of delivering simpler and safer surgeries, faster.
Are you able to share any insights on how the mixing of cognitive data analytics improves surgical outcomes with ORYOM™?
Overall, advanced technologies which might be based on large data sets and AI analytics can provide surgeons with insights into their techniques, and offer recent and optimized approaches by identifying patterns and understanding of the “big picture” that won’t have been available previously. Cognitive data analytics learns from large data sets in an effort to provide real-time guidance – improving imaging feedback and decision-making to enhance surgical precision. By analyzing real-time patient data, AI-based algorithms can provide the surgeon with patient-specific surgical optimization. This could improve accuracy and reduce the chance of errors that may occur in manual operations. As well as, pre- and post-op data evaluation can provide tailored approaches for patients.
ForSight is working on studying large data sets to enhance surgical precision with the ORYOM™ Platform. This is completed by real-time image guidance, which might provide surgeons with a more comprehensive surgical picture and smaller details which will have been missed, together with other data analytics methods to enhance training and execution, thus enhancing each the patient and surgeon experience.
