Emet Surgical Advances Smarter, Safer Surgery from Fitzsimons Innovation Community
For Bob Witkow, Founder and CEO of Emet Surgical, advancing surgical care is deeply personal. His vision sharpened after surviving cancer and enduring eight surgeries and radiation treatment. Recovery sparked a mission.
“The experience was terrible—for me and my whole family,” he said. “I had life-threatening complications, and I started thinking: if I’m facing this, others are too.”
Witkow turned that experience into action. He combined his background in data systems and tech licensing with the ingenuity that has shaped his career. The result is Emet Surgical’s flagship technology, Enhanced Surgical Precision (ESP), a software system that acts as a surgeon’s “co-pilot” during minimally invasive procedures.
ESP elevates the surgeon’s field of view by identifying anomalies in real time and overlaying them directly onto the operative screen. Its cancerous tissue recognition engine, built with intellectual property licensed from the University of Minnesota, alerts surgeons to potential malignancies as they operate. With clinical studies beginning in 2025, and the team is already developing enhancements that will expand ESP’s use to endometriosis surgeries.
Mission drives every decision. “People talk about the patient perspective, but I lived it,” Witkow said. “I wanted to create something that helps surgeons and makes the experience less traumatic for patients.”
Colorado accelerates Emet Surgical’s path to scale. The company is based at Fitzsimons Innovation Community in Aurora with immediate access to the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, one of the nation’s leading academic medical research centers. This environment brings researchers, clinicians, and entrepreneurs together in a connected health innovation community. Witkow points to the region’s talent, energy, and collaborative spirit as powerful drivers of the company’s progress.
“The ecosystem here is extraordinary,” he shared. “People are curious, collaborative, and motivated to make a difference.”
Bootstrapped and built with urgency, Emet Surgical reflects Colorado’s drive to turn lived experience into lifesaving innovation.
