£40,000 voucher backs Middlesbrough robotic-surgery training platform

A Middlesbrough surgical technology company has secured a £40,000 Innovation Voucher to build a digital platform intended to make robotic-surgery training easier to access.

Surghive is developing an app that will bring training material, progress tracking and skills-gap checks into one place. The company says it will test the app alongside a national pilot before moving towards a commercial launch.

Training beyond the operating theatre

The business was co-founded by surgeons Dr Rachael Coates and Professor Deena Harji, with director and chief financial officer Christina Anderson. Its wider plan combines mobile learning and virtual reality, so clinicians can complete parts of their training without depending entirely on access to hospital equipment.

According to the Tees Valley Combined Authority, surgeons can be expected to complete about 30 hours of virtual-reality training before progressing to in-person and supervised work. Surghive says access to robotic systems can be limited because training must fit around operating-theatre schedules.

The funded app is intended to act as the entry point to Surghive's training platform. Proposed features include access to learning content, a record of progress, prompts where knowledge needs strengthening, and links between trainees, the company and equipment manufacturers. Those features are still in development and have not yet been shown to improve training or patient outcomes.

A local voucher with a wider test

The award is part of the Tees Valley Investment Zone Innovation Voucher scheme, led by Teesside University. The programme is investing £1.5 million across digital and creative businesses, with 17 firms awarded support so far. Projects are due to use the funding over eight months to test feasibility, build prototypes, run pilots and prepare routes to market.

Surghive says Tees Valley's university and digital network helped it find development expertise locally. The company has interviewed local development teams and brought people from the area into the work. The voucher therefore supports both a healthcare-training idea and a piece of Middlesbrough's digital economy.

Surghive plans to develop the app in parallel with a national pilot and use feedback from that work before launch. The Combined Authority's announcement does not name the pilot, give a launch date or publish its assessment criteria, so the product remains at an early stage. Anderson said the company hopes the earlier build will support revenue generation in 2027, but that remains a business projection rather than a confirmed outcome.

Why the training question matters

Robotic-surgery training is already expanding across England. Oxford University Hospitals said in August that the accredited START programme would extend to six of England's 13 deanery footprints in 2026/27. Its course combines online learning, simulation, practical skills days and supervised clinical experience over 36 to 48 months.

The Royal College of Surgeons of England says training must keep pace with robotic and minimally invasive techniques, and supports accreditation, quality assurance and wider access to courses. That national context gives Surghive's Middlesbrough project a clear problem to address, while also setting a high bar for evidence, clinical governance and independent evaluation.

For now, the voucher pays for product development and testing, not a finished training service. The next meaningful evidence will come from the pilot: who takes part, how the app is assessed and whether it complements established accredited routes safely and usefully.