Fundacja Rozwoju Kardiochirurgii im. prof. Zbigniewa Religi (Robin Heart)

The Prof. Zbigniew Religa Foundation for Cardiac Surgery Development in Zabrze, a public benefit organization active since 1991, runs the Robin Heart program, which aims to build Poland's first surgical robot for heart operations.

Alongside Robin Heart, the Foundation also develops an artificial heart and biocybernetics and bioengineering laboratories, funded by donations, tax allocations and corporate sponsorship rather than venture capital. That is a very different model from the commercial leader in robotic surgery, America's Intuitive Surgical, whose da Vinci system has long dominated the global market for robot-assisted operations.

Robin Heart remains a research project with no sales network of its own and no certification for routine clinical use on a large scale. The Foundation's strengths are its long continuity of research and its exclusive focus on cardiac surgery; its weakness is the lack of commercialization comparable to da Vinci.

In Poland, availability is for now limited to the research and development stage, not routine procedures in hospitals.