Of the 50 biggest employers in the medical devices industry, Stryker Corp was the company which referred to robotics the most between July 2020 and June 2021. Credit: Shutterstock

Mentions of robotics within the filings of companies in the medical devices industry rose 228% between the first and second quarters of 2021.

In total, the frequency of sentences related to robotics between July 2020 and June 2021 was 88% higher than in 2016 when GlobalData, from whom our data for this article is taken, first began to track the key issues referred to in company filings.

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When companies in the medical devices industry publish annual and quarterly reports, ESG reports and other filings, GlobalData analyses the text and identifies individual sentences that relate to disruptive forces facing companies in the coming years. Robotics is one of these topics - companies that excel and invest in these areas are thought to be better prepared for the future business landscape and better equipped to survive unforeseen challenges.

To assess whether robotics is featuring more in the summaries and strategies of companies in the medical devices industry, two measures were calculated. Firstly, we looked at the percentage of companies which have mentioned robotics at least once in filings during the past twelve months - this was 21% compared to 15% in 2016. Secondly, we calculated the percentage of total analysed sentences that referred to robotics.

Of the 50 biggest employers in the medical devices industry, Stryker Corp was the company which referred to robotics the most between July 2020 and June 2021. GlobalData identified 29 robotics-related sentences in the United States-based company's filings - 0.6% of all sentences. Medtronic Plc mentioned robotics the second most - the issue was referred to in 0.5% of sentences in the company's filings. Other top employers with high robotics mentions included Smith & Nephew Plc, Terumo Corp and Johnson & Johnson.

Across all companies in the medical devices industry the filing published in the second quarter of 2021 which exhibited the greatest focus on robotics came from MicroPort Scientific Corp. Of the document's 1,696 sentences, eight (0.5%) referred to robotics.

This analysis provides an approximate indication of which companies are focusing on robotics and how important the issue is considered within the medical devices industry, but it also has limitations and should be interpreted carefully. For example, a company mentioning robotics more regularly is not necessarily proof that they are utilising new techniques or prioritising the issue, nor does it indicate whether the company's ventures into robotics have been successes or failures.

In the last quarter, companies in the medical devices industry based in Asia were most likely to mention robotics with 0.07% of sentences in company filings referring to the issue. In contrast, companies with their headquarters in the United States mentioned robotics in just 0.03% of sentences.