St. David’s HealthCare in Texas recently opened a surgical hospital that among other services will offer a number of robotics-assisted procedures.

The da Vinci Xi surgical system. (Image source: Intuitive Surgical)The da Vinci Xi surgical system. (Image source: Intuitive Surgical) The facility will offer a range of specialties, including spinal, bariatric, and orthopedic surgery. The use of robotic arms will enable surgeons to perform procedures considered routine enough to trust to machinery.

Allen Harrison, the chief executive officer of St. David’s North Austin Medical Center, told the Austin American-Statesman that procedures involving little more than making an incision and conducting simple movements can be done with the use of the robotic arm. When operated by a surgeon, the precision built in to robotics tends to cause less blood loss, less pain, and leaves a patient less reliant on postoperative narcotics than human hands alone would.

Earlier in 2016, a surgeon at the Texas Institute for Robotic Surgery at St. David’s North Austin Medical Center performed a robotically-assisted laparoscopic radical trachelectomy to treat a patient with stage IB1 cervical cancer. Using the robotic da Vinci Xi Surgical System, the doctor and his team performed a radical resection of the entire cervical tumor while preserving the patient’s fertility.

Founded in 2011, the Texas Institute for Robotic Surgery, a treatment, training and research center that combines robotic-assisted surgery with education and training, houses an array of collective intelligence on robotic surgery.