HQIP announces tender for innovative robotic surgery registry

11 Mar 2026

Closing date EXTENSION: Midday Monday 27^th April 2026.

HQIP is seeking to commission the delivery of the National Registry of Robotically Assisted Surgery (NRRAS), to ensure that patient safety, equity and value remain at the centre of this rapidly expanding area of healthcare. A tender for the management of this programme is now open; further details of which can be found on the Tenders section of the HQIP website. Find out more about this exciting new area of healthcare, and the pivotal role of the new registry, below…

Robotically Assisted Surgery (RAS) is transforming the delivery of minimally invasive care across the NHS. Using advanced robotic platforms that translate a surgeon’s hand movements into highly precise micro-movements inside the body, RAS enhances dexterity, filters tremor and provides high-definition 3D visualisation in complex anatomical spaces.

Although RAS has been available for more than two decades, uptake within the NHS was initially limited by cost and largely confined to complex cancer procedures. This landscape is now changing rapidly. Robotic platforms are increasingly used across orthopaedics, urology, gynaecology and thoracic surgery, including for higher-volume and less complex procedures. By 2035, it is predicted that up to 500,000 procedures per year in England could be undertaken using robotic technology.

A rapidly evolving national landscape

In April 2025, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) issued Early Value Assessment (EVA) recommendations for robotic systems in cancer and orthopaedics. Eleven systems received conditional support for use within the NHS while further evidence is generated over a three-year period to demonstrate cost-effectiveness and patient benefit.

Shortly afterwards, in May 2025, NHS England’s Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) programme published Implementation of robotic-assisted surgery (RAS) in England, setting out clear objectives and principles for service planning, workforce training, safe implementation and evaluation.

These recommendations establish a coordinated national approach: enabling innovation and patient access, while requiring companies to generate high-quality evidence, maintain regulatory approval and comply with NHS England’s Digital Technology Assessment Criteria (DTAC). NICE will review the guidance in 2029 to determine whether routine adoption across the NHS is justified.

The role of the national registry

Robotic surgery represents one of the most significant technological shifts in modern surgical care. As the NHS moves from selective adoption to large-scale implementation, robust national data will be essential. HQIP’s national RAS registry will provide the independent, clinically led assurance framework needed to support safe innovation — ensuring that as robotic surgery grows, it does so with clear evidence of benefit, value for money, and equitable access for patients across England.

Against this backdrop of rapid expansion and structured evaluation, the new registry will aim to:

Improve patient safety by tracking short- and long-term outcomes of robotic procedures
Capture key quality metrics aligned with NICE EVA evidence-generation requirements
Support standardisation of practice across providers
Identify variation in outcomes, including unwarranted variation and health inequities
Provide robust outcome evidence to inform clinical guidelines, commissioning and regulatory decisions
Enable research and innovation in robotic technologies and techniques
Assess equity of access to support future strategic planning
Provide near real-time data to evaluate effectiveness compared with conventional surgical approaches
Maintain close alignment with NICE guidance and national quality standards
Deliver timely, meaningful outputs tailored to clinicians, providers, commissioners, regulators and patients.

The registry will be clinically led, use robust methodological and statistical techniques, and link — where feasible and appropriate — to other national datasets at individual patient level. This will enable comprehensive outcome tracking and system-level insight from the outset.

Working in partnership to generate evidence

The registry will evolve alongside the expanding use of robotic surgery, working in close partnership with key stakeholders. Through this collaborative approach, the registry will ensure: