Silicon Valley-based Auris Health Inc., formerly Auris Surgical Robotics Inc., announced that the company’s Monarch Platform has received clearance from the US Food and Drug Administration.

The platform received clearance for diagnostic and therapeutic bronchoscopic procedures and the goal “is to enable more-accurate diagnosis, and eventually treatment, of small and hard-to-reach nodules in the periphery of the lung” in lung cancers.

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According to the company’s press release, lung cancer is the lead in cancer-related deaths in the world, with more patients dying every year than from prostate, breast, and colon cancers combined.

The platform is said to usher in a new era of medical intervention in endoscopy, which is the use of small cameras and tools to enter the body through its natural openings.

Founder and CEO of Auris Health, Frederic Moll said that “technology has advanced significantly since the development of the earliest robotics platforms used in medicine” and that the Monarch Platform “is designed to address the limitations of current technology with the introduction of a new era of flexible robotics.”

According to Michael Simoff, Director of Interventional Pulmonology at Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, Michigan, lung cancer “is the number one cancer killer of both men and women in the world” and “the development of new advanced technology, like the Monarch Platform, could allow [physicians] the opportunity to make the diagnosis early, which translates directly to saving lives.”

The company hopes to improve “patient outcomes, [enhance] physician capabilities, and [lower] costs to the healthcare system.”

Monarch will use a control-like interface combined with computer-assisted navigation, which will be based on 3D models of the patient’s lung anatomy, to help physicians have a constant and clear visual of a procedure.

Currently, there is no set date for when testing of the Monarch Platform will begin.

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