It’s a bot! Royal Free Charity and Royal Free… | Royal Free Charity

It’s a bot! Royal Free Charity and Royal Free London delighted to announce arrival of their new surgical robot

6 November 2025 
A patient in a hospital gown and glasses standing beside the new surgical robot.
Raymond, one of the first patients to have surgery with da Vinci Xi surgical robot 
With four arms, two operating consoles and 720 degrees of rotation, a new da Vinci Xi surgical robot has joined the Royal Free Hospital’s (RFH) cancer surgery team to much joy from the medics. 

The new da Vinci Xi surgical robot – a sibling for the ten-year-old da Vinci Xi of operating theatre 13 – helps surgeons carry out complex surgery for pancreas, liver and bowel cancer so that patients recover faster with fewer complications, less pain and reduced scarring. 

Funded entirely by the generosity of the public and charitable foundations, the new robot joins the NHS trust following a major fundraising appeal by the charity. Having raised £1.7million so far, they are £300,000 from reaching their £2million target. The charity is grateful to the robot’s manufacturer, Intuitive, for installing the robot while the campaign is still live, enabling medics to help more patients and train the surgical robotics team. 

“With the NHS’s ten-year plan promising to bring robotic surgery to even more hospitals over the next decade, the generosity of our donors has meant we’ve been able to bring this much-needed innovative tech to patients far faster than the NHS could alone. We’re enormously grateful for their help in transforming the experience and outcomes of cancer patients.”

– Jon Spiers, RFC chief executive 

The Royal Free London provides the largest volume of first cancer treatments of any London provider and urgently needed an additional robot to help some of the 66,000 patients referred with suspected cancer its staff see each year. 

Their new robot is now being used to perform minimally invasive surgery for patients with a range of cancers including pancreatic, liver, and bowel. The original robot continues to be used by surgeons mainly for patients with kidney cancer and other kidney conditions. 

The chief benefit of robotic surgery is that it is minimally invasive, giving patients a smoother, faster recovery with a lower risk of complications than traditional open surgery. Speedier recuperation means patients can return home from hospital much more quickly, enabling the NHS to treat more patients and bring down waiting lists. 

Ramond’s story

Raymond Coulter, 70, a retired electrical contractor from Letchworth, Herts, was one of the first patients to have surgery with the latest robot. Consultant liver transplant and HPB (hepato-pancreato-biliary) surgeon Dinesh Sharma used the robot to perform a seven-hour operation in which he removed part of Raymond’s pancreas, spleen and lymph nodes. 

A group of doctors in scrubs, surrounding a patient in a gown, all in front of the new surgical robot.
Raymond, surgeon Dinesh Sharma (second from left) and the surgical team with the robot 

Despite the complexity of his surgery, Raymond recovered quickly and returned home after just a six-day stay. All his tumours were successfully removed and he is having chemotherapy as a precautionary measure. The five, faint, two-centimetre scars on his stomach are the only visible sign of his surgery. 

“I’m feeling absolutely brilliant. People look at me and say they just can’t believe I’ve had major surgery. They said that even when I’d just come out of hospital. They can’t believe it, especially when I show them my scars, which are miniscule. If I’d have had open surgery, I’d have been out of it for a lot longer. But because this surgery was less invasive the recovery rate is so much quicker, which is especially good as I’m not a spring chicken anymore. To be able to do the things that I’m doing now- swimming, walking, clay pigeon shooting and going out for meals with friends – it’s wonderful.”

– Raymond Coulter 

The Royal Free Charity thanks everyone who generously supported the campaign, including Gemma and Simon Lyons, the Pears Foundation, the Robert Gavron Charitable Trust, Ruth and Noam Tamir and the Tamir-Sternberg Foundation. 

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