May 17, 2025

The Memo: Oath Surgical Rebuilding the System from the Ground Up

The Memo: Oath Surgical Rebuilding the System from the Ground Up

Newsletter - Oath Surgical

After years of investing in and advising surgical innovation from the vantage point of Intuitive Ventures, Oliver Keown is stepping into the founder’s chair—with a bold new vision for the future of outpatient surgery.

“At Intuitive, I had the privilege of sitting atop a giant, seeing where surgery was headed,” Keown said. “But I also saw the system’s fragmentation—and a gap no one else was addressing.”

His answer is Oath Surgical, a company emerging from stealth this past week. Oath isn’t launching with a single device or platform. Instead, it’s building an entirely new surgical system—one that fuses AI, infrastructure, and incentives to power the next generation of outpatient care.

Origin Story

Keown’s career spans medicine, venture capital, and surgical innovation. As a trained physician and former leader of Intuitive Ventures, he’s spent the last decade evaluating the future of medtech from every angle.

“I realized I had a unique opportunity—and responsibility—to act,” he said. 

In late 2023, Keown left Intuitive to build Oath. The mission: reinvent surgery from the outpatient lens, blending digital infrastructure with physical surgical centers. “We’re not layering point solutions into a broken system—we’re rebuilding the system itself.”

The Current Landscape

Today’s surgical system is costly, fragmented, and built for the hospital. Patients face long wait times, unclear navigation, and disjointed care. Surgeons are often burdened by outdated infrastructure and disconnected tools. Digital health solutions, while abundant, often operate in silos—one app for scheduling, another for documentation, and another for post-op care.

“The world of surgery is filled with point solutions trying to fix pieces of a broken puzzle,” Keown said. “But without end-to-end continuity, you miss the opportunity to unlock true value.”

Oath is rethinking that paradigm—starting with a network of AI-centric outpatient surgical centers.

Inside the Innovation

At its core, Oath Surgical is building a vertically integrated platform that connects patients, providers, and payors through a unified, tech-enabled surgical experience.

“Our model fuses the physical and the digital,” Keown said. “We’re building an end-to-end operating system that begins with the point of referral and continues through recovery, powered by AI and anchored by our own surgical centers.”

This operating system connects:

  • Patients: who opt in and receive coordinated, digitally supported care from pre-op to recovery
  • Surgeons: who are vetted Oath partners and co-owners of the surgical center network
  • Technology: including AI scribes, analytics, and integrated workflows that drive efficiency and outcomes
  • Payors: who benefit from high-quality, lower-cost care in a value-based model

By owning the episode of care—rather than outsourcing key components—Oath captures the continuity needed to apply AI meaningfully and measure true surgical ROI.

“This is our chance to align incentives across the board,” Keown explained. “Patients get better outcomes. Surgeons have ownership and support. Payors save money. And medtech innovators have a partner that can prove their value.”

Progress and Milestones

Despite just coming out of stealth, Oath is already operating with impressive traction:

  • Two company-owned surgical centers launched in the Portland market, with a third under development
  • A national network of 25 affiliated centers and 125+ Oath surgeons
  • Multi-specialty capabilities delivering complex care in a lower-cost, outpatient setting
  • Active value-based care arrangements with payors and health plans
  • A $10M+ seed round was secured to fuel further growth

Looking ahead, Keown plans to expand regionally and nationally, scaling both the physical and digital footprint of Oath’s model.

“Our ambition is national,” he said. “We’re building density in core markets and creating a repeatable, high-quality, AI-powered model of outpatient surgical care. This is just the beginning.”