Filippo Filicori, a robotic surgeon by profession: "Soon robots and AI will operate in our place."

In five years, we will no longer be the ones scheduling surgery appointments. A virtual agent will do it for us. No waiting lists, zero inefficiencies. Another agent will prepare the operating room : clean, instruments ready, lights on. Microphones and cameras will record every word and observe every gesture. Then the surgeon enters. It's a robot aided by artificial intelligence . It performs a perfect operation, collects data. It's fast, efficient. It's not a dream, it's not science fiction. It's a reality taking shape. We're in New York. Here, Filippo Filicori, a robotic surgeon from Bologna , is building new frontiers. "I'm a doctor: if you show me that the results of an autonomous system are better than mine, I'll stop operating tomorrow," he begins. "I believe in data and technological progress for the good of the patient."

Having just turned forty, he has lived and worked in the United States for 15 years. He performs 300 surgeries a year. He leads technological innovation at Northwell Health, the largest hospital network in the Northeast. He is the director of a minimally invasive surgery specialty program and an associate professor. He is an expert in artificial intelligence, specializing in robotics for the treatment of obesity and gastrointestinal disorders.

Always fascinated by the world of research, Filicori left Bologna at 24, fresh from his medical degree, with the idea of ​​training as a surgeon in a world of excellence. "Surgery in those years was, for me, the fastest way to help others and solve problems." He spent a year as a research fellow at Memorial Sloan Kettering, then continued his specialty at Weill Cornell, one of America's top hospitals. He stayed there for seven years.

The turning point? In Portland, Oregon, during his superspecialty year. He met a surgeon who worked between Strasbourg and the US, a surgeon with a passion for innovation, who instilled in him a passion for technology applied to the operating room. Then he discovered the first examples of artificial intelligence in surgery. "I realized it would change everything and that it was what I wanted to do."

Filicori now has a research laboratory that works closely with universities and companies that drive global innovation. He works in the fields of medicine and engineering. He collaborates with Intuitive Surgical, the company that produces almost all the robots used in the operating room. He creates immersive videos simulating operations with Nvidia. His teams are made up of surgeons, engineers, and researchers. He is in the hospital during the interview. He has just completed a procedure with the robot.

"I'm a surgeon, I know the job, but 99% of the procedures I perform are done with robots . It's an added bonus. But thanks to the robot , I can collect a huge amount of data that allows me to understand how to improve performance and patient outcomes."

Thanks to virtual reality, Filicori is also training new generations of surgeons. "There's some disconcerting news that should make us reflect: we're still learning to operate directly on people. It's anachronistic, but that's how it is. Drivers practice in simulators, self-driving cars train in virtual environments. Why do surgeons still have to learn on patients' bodies? I started from here to try to change things."

In simulated environments, young surgeons learn to operate at the console: "The artificial intelligence analyzes their movements and is able to accurately determine whether they are good at it or whether they need to continue practicing before going into the operating room."

And here lies the real revolution. " Artificial intelligence supports the surgeon in real time, recognizing anatomical structures, flagging critical points, and reducing the margin for error. During a cholecystectomy, for example, AI recognizes bile duct structures, connective tissue, and blood vessels. It sends signals and warns : don't cut here, or you risk causing complications. Imagine having a second voice in the operating room, one that doesn't get distracted and doesn't make mistakes, capable of making the operation safer."

The path we'll take is total automation. "At Johns Hopkins, there's a young engineer from Munich, Axel Krieger, who has trained a robot with hours of surgical videos. The result is a system capable of performing some delicate phases of an operation on its own, making autonomous decisions. It's still experimental research, but it shows how close the future is."

If there's a barrier, it's not technological but cultural. It's within these barriers that Filicori has found his mission. "The medical profession is often reluctant to embrace innovation. They know little or nothing about artificial intelligence. I sometimes present our work at conferences, bringing data and concrete results, yet no one asks questions at the end of my talks. They've always looked at me like a three-headed histrionics. But one of my missions is to increase the digital literacy of our clinical colleagues , because the future is closer than they imagine."

Filicori organizes medical conferences around the world, including one in his native Bologna, to explain the coming revolution. In the US, besides his own, there are only "a handful" of laboratories studying how to use artificial intelligence to guide surgery. They are all awaiting FDA approval. "We are at the beginning of what will be an exponential explosion. And the barriers to entry will be increasingly lower. The number of skills required to carry out projects of this kind will halve every year, reducing costs and resources for research. The role of surgery will shrink in the future because non-surgical alternatives will be better and surgery will be reserved only for traumatic events."

What have you learned in your life that could be useful to all of us who aren't robotic surgeons?

At this point Filicori falls silent, takes his time, then says: "That's a good question." "That intelligence comes in many forms . Too often we remain stuck in the traditional canons, thinking that someone who can speak well, who makes themselves understood, or who has charisma is intelligent. Thus, we miss out on a whole group of innovators who have something extra but whom we fail to see. We are moving toward an increasingly technical and less emotional world. I meet people who barely know how to speak, yet in front of a computer they create extraordinary things."

Then he stops and asks: "Have I perhaps digressed?" He continues: "I've certainly learned that most problems have a solution; you just need to find the right key and not give up. We give up too quickly. In Italy more than ever."

Will you return to operate in our operating rooms?

"I'm not ruling it out. If the conditions were right to spend my time with patients, I'd be happy to return. For now, however, the system doesn't allow it. Never say never."

Meanwhile, Filicori will return to Italy for Italian Tech Week . On October 2nd, at 9:30 a.m., he will be joined on stage by a trusted collaborator: his robot surgeon.