Prash is a mission-driven entrepreneur focused on redefining surgery through uncompromising execution and exceptional teams. After losing his father to a surgical complication in his twenties, he spent more than a decade working across leading surgical technology efforts, ultimately concluding that incremental innovation could not solve the global lack of dignified access to world-class surgery. From 2016 to 2021, he founded WortheeMed, Inc., led Essential Machines, and advised the UCSF Surgical Innovations Program. In 2021, he co-founded Petal Surgical, which he now leads toward first-in-human trials with its incisionless surgery platform.
In this FOMO, Prash Chopra, the founding CEO of Petal, will highlight a turning point in our industry: the beginning of an era where healing does not begin with harm. He will reflect on the foundation of today’s surgical robotic industry. Then he will confront a shared frustration: a trajectory in which surgery is becoming more technical, more complex, more costly, and paradoxically less human. Finally, he will make a case that incisionless surgery is not optional - it is inevitable.