At the 2026 American Urological Association (AUA) Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, Dr. Jeremy Teoh of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) delivered the John K. Lattimer Lecture, opening the Friday afternoon plenary session on May 15, 2026. His lecture, “Transurethral Robotic En Bloc TURBT, Challenging the Status Quo,” focused on robotic en bloc resection of bladder tumors using the Virtuoso system.
The Lattimer Lectureship is one of the most prestigious honors in urology. For 50 years, the AUA has awarded it annually to a medical professional whose innovations and practice have the potential to transform urology or the broader field of medicine. Dr. Teoh is the first Asia based researcher to receive it. The AUA represents more than 23,000 urology professionals worldwide, and its plenary sessions are the centerpiece of the Annual Meeting.
Dr. Teoh is an associate professor of urology at CUHK, clinical director of urology and director of robotic services at CUHK Medical Centre, and the principal investigator of the VIABLE trial, the first in human study of the Virtuoso system. He is a leading advocate for en bloc resection, which removes a bladder tumor in one intact piece rather than piecemeal.
In the lecture, Dr. Teoh reviewed the limitations of conventional tumor resection, including specimen fragmentation and incomplete staging, along with the growing evidence supporting en bloc resection. He noted that despite this evidence, adoption of the technique remains limited because of its technical difficulty with conventional instruments. As he explained in AUA Daily News coverage ahead of the lecture, standard cystoscopes are about 8.7 mm in diameter, too small to accommodate conventional robotic arms, while the Virtuoso system uses nested, curved nitinol arms about 1 mm in diameter that bend and rotate independently to enable two handed cutting and retraction.
He then presented the Virtuoso system in use, showing how its miniature arms provide stable traction on the tumor while maintaining continuous endoscopic visualization within the standard transurethral setup. Dr. Teoh presented his team’s first human cases with the system, all completed successfully, and highlighted that the platform may help lower the technical barrier to en bloc resection for urologists without prior en bloc experience. He also looked ahead to potential future capabilities, including robotic suturing, that could expand what is possible through a transurethral approach. According to UroToday’s coverage of the lecture, he concluded that the “transurethral robotic platform is the next breakthrough in robotic surgery.”
Dr. Teoh performed the first in human cases with the Virtuoso system at CUHK in May 2025 and previously presented on the platform as a State of the Art Lecture at WCET 2025.
The Virtuoso system is investigational and has not been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration or any other regulatory body.
About Virtuoso Surgical
Virtuoso Surgical has developed a new class of robotic surgery system designed to improve minimally invasive endoscopic surgery. The Virtuoso system features a pair of needle sized instrument arms made of concentric nitinol tubes that mimic a surgeon’s hand motions, providing control and dexterity at the tip of a rigid endoscope. The system uses patented technology initially developed by Virtuoso’s founders at Johns Hopkins University, Vanderbilt University, and Vanderbilt University Medical Center, with funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. For additional information, visit www.virtuososurgical.net.