The future of robotic surgery lies in helping surgeons see better, make stronger decisions, and operate with greater precision.
In this episode, Jean-Pierre Hubschman, Founder and CEO of Horizon Surgical Systems, discusses the development of Polaris, a physical AI platform built specifically for ophthalmic surgery. He explains how variations in surgeons' vision, judgment, and technical execution can influence patient outcomes, even for routine procedures. Jean-Pierre explores how robotics and real-time imaging can provide intelligent surgical assistance while keeping physicians in control. He also shares his vision for making consistently high-quality eye surgery accessible to every patient, regardless of who performs the procedure.
Tune in to discover how physical AI and robotics could transform the future of eye surgery!
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[00:00:03] Hello everyone and welcome back to the Outcomes Rocket reporting live here from SRS 2026 at The Diplomat in Hollywood, Florida. I have the pleasure of being with Dr. Thomas Baltrunas. He is the founder and CEO of Horizon Surgical Systems. J.P., thanks for joining us today. Thanks for the invitation. Great to meet you and great to be here.
[00:00:26] Yeah, listen, so to kick things off, I'd love for you to tell our audience a little bit more about you and a little bit about Horizon Surgical Systems. So J.P. Hubsman, I'm an eye surgeon. I was training in France as a retinal surgeon and practicing France and Spain. At the time, I was already collaborating with the industry, developing new surgical techniques, new instrumentation.
[00:00:48] And I was recruited to UCLA 20 years ago in 2006 and joined the Steiner, which is a well-known eye center at UCLA. And at the time, I was introduced to Cassit, which is a center of innovation at UCLA, where you have engineers and surgeons sharing ideas and developing new technology, evaluating new technology as well. And they had the DaVinci platform at the time, which was like very new, robotic technology, obviously, super exciting.
[00:01:18] You were there at the beginning. Yes. And I realized the potential for surgery in general, but also for ophthalmology. And I became very interested about robotic and started like building a program. And I realized at the time as a retinal surgeon as well, that patients don't have the same chance depending on surgeons' skills and expertise, which are very valuable from one surgeon to another. And I also realized at the time, my training fellows, that surgery was about three things.
[00:01:48] It was about vision, decision and manipulation. Everything is about this. I like that. And you need to really master those three skills to be a great surgeon and to achieve great outcomes for your patient. So we started with these simple ideas. Simple, because I see them, it was a little bit more difficult to execute things to get, to execute. But to build a platform which would help every surgeon achieve those stand-up outcomes for every patient.
[00:02:17] So that means helping surgeons with the vision, helping with the decision and the manipulation. Robi platform at the time were just about manipulation. Now, really build this Polaris platform about these three things. So we build a dedicated visualization capability, allowing surgeons to see everything inside the eye much better than any human surgeon can see with traditional visualization capability. And also assist surgeons with the...
[00:02:47] So Polaris is really like a physical AI for surgery. We started like 15 years ago. We didn't even know what physical AI was at the time. We just realized that we need to help surgeons on those three pillars, vision, decision, manipulation. And so we've been incubating at UCLA for 10 years. We spent on the company four years ago out of UCLA, so Ryzen surgical system.
[00:03:09] And we are building Polaris, which will transform my surgery and help surgeons and assist surgeons on those three pillars. And really change how things are doing, how things are done. And will really elevate every surgeon and allow every single patient to achieve the best outcome they deserve. That's fantastic. And JP, what brings you to SRS? So SRS is obviously the maker for Bobadit.
[00:03:37] So we decided to come obviously to meet people like colleagues, industry, investors. I think that it's very important to talk to everyone, learn from everyone and see what everyone is doing and how we can help each other and better technology to our patient. That's great. So having been here now, JP, and looking into the future, where do you see Verizon going and the industry in general?
[00:04:04] I think that the industry is really shifting from helping with the manipulation, what they've been doing for 20 years, to bringing much more intelligence and assistance into this platform. And so I've seen over the last two years that an AI has been providing so much potential.
[00:04:25] And so now everyone is trying to integrate this intelligence to the platform to really help search not just in the precision and manipulation, but really in the ability to see better and make the better decision assist. We are following the same as the car industry, where the level of assistant is going towards like urchinomous car. I think that in surgery, this is the same thing.
[00:04:52] It may not be like fully autonomous and the platform will do everything. I don't think that the surgeon will supervise, but with so much assistant that will every surgeon to achieve like the same super-acomphic patient. So I think that's this. I see it across industry. Ophthalmology is very unique because we have real-time image capabilities, so we can really see in real time everything. It's not like MRI where you need to compute a lot of information.
[00:05:20] We have cameras and OCTs, so it's real-time. And the eye anatomy, even if it's a soft tissue, it's barely changing during the surgery. One eye virus is very horrible to another eye. So we can really provide even better level of assistance to our surgeon and really address any type of officer. He transforms the transfer skill. So everything will change over the next few years. I'm super excited about this.
[00:05:47] I think that surgeon I'm talking to, understanding as well that this technology will really help them and not replace them. Totally. But that's a super exciting change. I love that, JP. And thanks for sharing that with us. Folks, you'll want to keep your eye on robotic surgery for the eye. I think JP and his team at Horizon Surgery are pioneers in this space. So keep your eye on this. I think it's a growing field, wouldn't you say? For sure. It's going to change everything.
[00:06:16] And again, I'm very convinced that technology will help tremendously surgeon in the near future. That's great, JP. Well, look, thanks for doing this. If people wanted to get in touch with you and the team, where can they do that? So we have a website. We have a link team. We have a limited amount of information we can share at this stage as we are 30-stage startup. Everyone is welcome to reach out to us and we'll share everything we can. That's fantastic, JP. Well, thanks for being with us today.
[00:06:46] Thanks, JP.