Already available in the North East, North West and East of England, START will now be offered in Thames Valley, Wessex and Kent, Surrey and Sussex from the 2026/27 academic year.

Jonathan Brotherton, chief executive of University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust and chair of the Shelford Group, said: ‘The success of the START pilot has demonstrated the value of a co-ordinated national approach to robotic surgery training. We are delighted to expand the programme into Thames Valley, Wessex and Kent, Surrey and Sussex, extending access to high-quality training and helping to build the future workforce needed to support advances in patient care.'

NHS England has set a national ambition for 9 in 10 keyhole surgeries to be delivered with robot assistance within 10 years, up from around 1 in 5 today, with robotic surgery becoming the default for many operations.

The START expansion marks the next phase of growth for the nationally recognised programme, which was formally launched in December 2025, accredited by the Royal College of Surgeons of England in March 2026, and is supported by the Association of Surgeons in Training.

Developed by The Shelford Group in partnership with the Newcastle Surgical Training Centre, START is designed to deliver comprehensive, standardised surgical robotics training across Intuitive's da Vinci, CMR Surgical's Versius and the Medtronic Hugo™ RAS surgical system.

Delivered over 36–48 months, START combines e-learning, industry-led technology training, simulation tasks with feedback, hands-on skills days and supervised clinical experience. A dedicated online Skills Tracker enables trainees to log activity, receive supervisor feedback and monitor progress against programme milestones.