E ntrepreneur Martin Frost is taking on the corporate giants with a surgical robot that’s affordable for poorer hospitals.

On the outskirts of Cambridge, there’s an old, converted pig shed that’s shrouded in secrecy. Inside is a cohort of future surgeons being put through their paces. They spend hours upon hours honing their skills.

This room, however, isn’t filled with sweating medical students; it’s a training ground for robots, soon set to join their human counterparts in hospital operating theatres.

“The image you should have is of a human surgeon sitting behind a console, with 3D imaging [software] and hand controllers, which move a range of lightweight, free-moving robotic arms,” says Martin Frost, the chief executive of Cambridge Medical Robotics (CMR),

which created and developed the machine surgeons.

Laparoscopic surgery is a technique – known as “keyhole surgery” – where small incisions are made into the patient, through which instruments and cameras can be threaded for a range of operations. Because the wounds involved are smaller than traditional open surgery, patients recover faster, with less scarring.

“There’s an existing laparoscopic market, but there’s a huge need still to address,” explains Frost: the millions of people who are still getting open and not laparoscopic surgery. “The tools to do keyhole are phenomenally difficult to use.”

The creators of these machines hope to dramatically improve the accuracy of this kind of procedure. “It’s about enhancing the surgeon’s natural dexterity,” says Frost. “Our design is deliberately bio-mimicking: it has a shoulder, elbow and wrist.”

Incorporated in 2014, CMR has been expanding rapidly, reaching a headcount of 100 in the past three years.

However, getting the initial funding to get things off the ground was an uphill struggle. “Persuading investors to part with the money to develop a prototype was very hard work,” says Frost. It's a challenge made more difficult, he thinks, because successful British medical device companies are few and far between.

The apparent lack of thriving UK businesses in this area isn’t due to too small a potential market; the surgical robotics industry is set to be worth $10bn by 2020 and $25bn by 2025. CMR is hoping to get a substantial slice of that pie through pricing – the company’s aim is to build a system that, across the lifetime of the product (about six to seven years), would offer a cost comparable to that of manual surgery.

That requires far more than just building an effective one-off purchase. Servicing the robots once they’re in place, and value engineering throughout the development process, are crucial to CMR’s strategy, explains its chief.

“We don’t just want our robots to be bought by the big London hospitals, which have large charities underpinning their funding,”

he says. “The economics need to be so attractive that poorer hospitals, across the UK, can afford them.”

Competing on price is a challenge at both the bottom and top of the sector: high-cost competitors sell robotic products for about

£2m a system – and with giants such as Johnson & Johnson and Google teaming up in a bid to dominate the medical robotics market, the economies of such a scale will doubtless drive prices down.

“Some people have asked us: what can a small UK company possibly do to compete with the largest in the world?” says Frost, who, asked whether or not he’s worried about the likes of Johnson & Johnson and Google, whose combined size is more than $1trn entering the area, replies: “No; it massively validates our market.”

A proud Mancunian and chartered management accountant, Frost first spent a year as a lone ranger, trying to raise the capital to create the business. “I was employee number one in January 2014, and was quickly joined by [technology director] Luke Hares and [engineering director] Keith Marshall once we had the initial seed capital."

Diversity is what has made Cambridge great for business Martin Frost, Cambridge Medical Robotics

The fledgling firm's first month was spent squatting in another start-up’s office before moving to its first leased premises in March, which is when Paul Roberts, operations director, joined the firm.

Hiring the initial team was made more straightforward by a common connection: Dr Mark Slack, a leading gynaecologist at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, explains Frost. “Mark wanted a robot that would be multi-speciality, versatile and affordable, so we set off to build a next-generation, revolutionary robot that ticks those boxes.”

Connections such as these – between technical specialists, medical experts and finance professionals – are why Frost believes that Cambridge is a uniquely hospitable environment for tech companies. “It’s one of the few places in the world where you could consider building a next-gen robotics company, given the diversity of skills needed to make it happen,” he says.

But he fears the risk posed by Brexit to this delicate, but growing, ecosystem. He believes that the vote may put off talented international workers, by sending an anti-immigration message: “It’s distressing. Diversity is what has made Cambridge great for business."

Brexit aside, Frost’s hiring is made more difficult by the taxes placed on businesses that require migrant workers. The Conservatives have proposed doubling the charge levied on companies employing migrant workers to £2,000 a year by the end of the parliament.

However, even though about 15pc of the CMR team are non-British, this tax won’t put the company off hiring migrants; Frost can’t hire UK workers with the skills that he needs.

Having moved through cadavers and, awaiting its CE (health and safety) mark, CMR won’t share details of its progress in human testing; it’s simply too sensitive to share with competitors. But the team's confident about entering the market early. Versius, its robot, will be available next year.

And while many of CMR’s partnerships with clinicians and hospitals are UK based, it’s also collaborating with Scandinavian and US health institutions. Demand for medical robotics is also rising in China and Japan.

“We’ve got to build a global company,” says Frost, who, despite the challenge of enormous competitors and sourcing international talent, remains confident that CMR has moved quickly enough, and with sufficient agility, to hit the market in time.

“We plan to be the second biggest provider of medical robots two years from now,” he says.