Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital hosted a group of girls from the Santa Clarita Valley Boys & Girls Club Robotics team to try robotic-assisted surgery using a da Vinci Surgical System Thursday afternoon.

“Our robotics program is apart of our core for our Academic Success programs at the club,” said David Menchaca, Santa Clarita Valley Boys And Girls Club CEO. “(The program) is just one step closer to a great future for kids in our community.”

The machine allows medical personnel to perform minimal invasive surgery and helps minimize the risk for patients during the operation.

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“(The machine) gives you 3D vision, wristed instruments that give you more degrees of freedom as compared to traditional laparoscopic instruments, and it allows for the scaling of movement,” said Stevan Stephanian, M.D. “So this machine allows us to be more precise during surgery.”

Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital invited the girls’ robotics team in effort to support the clubs goal to foster interest and skills in the Science, Engineering, Technology, and Mathematics (STEM) fields.

“It’s a tremendous need and tremendous opportunity to start girls at an early age learning simple coding and robotics programming,” said Menchaca. “Today they get to see the real world application of these programs in action.”

These programs seek to introduce more young women to STEM fields, where among science and engineering graduates, men are employed in a STEM occupation at twice the rate of women: 31 percent compared with 15 percent, according to the most recent Census Bureau report.

“It’s wonderful to be here at Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital so that girls can see what they’re learning at the Boys and Girls Club can be applied to the real world medical field,” said Menchaca.

Along with helping club members interact with the cutting-edge technology in healthcare, Henry Mayo has also planned to make a donation to the robotics program.

The Santa Clarita Valley Boys and Girls Club offers a Robotics Program for girls, ages 9 – 14. Participants learn to design, program and control fully-functional Lego Mindstorm Robots. The girls use software to plan, test and modify sequences of instructions for a variety of life-like robotic behaviors. They learn to collect and analyze data from sensors, using data logging functionalities embedded in the software.