This is a two-part workshop with 90 minutes devoted to each part. The first part is dedicated to presentations from leading standardization and research experts in the area of medical robots. The second one, will build on the presented activities and take these notions a step further in order to collect inputs from a wide community. It is the aim to bring experts from research and the standardization community together and define future strategies for the rapidly changing and growing area of medical robotics. The field of medical robots including surgical and rehabilitation robotics is expanding with new market viable products implementing latest scientific results. The basic safety and essential performance requirements in this domain are referred to two areas:

• on one side we need standards to build safe medical robot systems. This is vital because in the medical, surgical and rehabilitation field the robot is typically in direct contact with the exterior and interior of the human body and applies forces to the patient in different ways. This also implies the need for safe control systems, training issues and many other factors that can influence the overall “safety”.
• on the other side the safety issues have to be weighed by the medical approach considering if the robotics technology is providing at least the same benefit for the patient as the traditional alternatives.