Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) The first question comes from the line of James Francis with Morgan Stanley.
James Francis – Morgan Stanley
It looks like the OUS results that you had were the weakest that we have seen in some time. What else can you tell us about the source of this sequential decline from Q2? Is there a specific country where orders did not materialize or are you seeing some seasonality in EU? Is the CapEx spending cycle bottoming out OUS maybe with a lag from the US cycle?
Lonnie M. Smith
James, I think a little of everything you said has probably affected our Q3 numbers. First off, Q3 is historically a slow quarter in Europe. There are a lot of vacations both from a patient’s side, although our procedures remain strong, just putting deals together is always more challenging, but I think on top of that, without question, there is some recessionary activity being felt in Europe, and I don't think it's the same in any country as evidenced by Germany having three systems for example this quarter while other countries did not contribute, so I think we really attribute it to nothing really structural other than some forces that work against us OUS in Q3.
James Francis – Morgan Stanley
Getting back to the JAMA study, if you think about the clinical data published on Da Vinci, it’s not been sponsored by the company and much of it tends to evaluate the single center experience. After the JAMA study came out last week, how much sense does it make for Intuitive to sponsor clinical work, particularly larger, more multi-center trials that can demonstrate the real value of technology?
Lonnie M. Smith
Our position has always been that the data will come, and it'll probably come in forms that people become accustomed to, meaning multi-centered trials and surgeons working together to put together multi-centered trials. In fact, we're seeing some of that and you saw some of that, and actually I referenced it in the GYN oncology site. One of the challenges of rapid multi-centered trial is going to be the source of information. For example, you could do a retrospective analysis and observational study using CPT codes, but the medical community doesn’t really look at that as really good solid evidence-based medicine, and so I think what you're asking for will happen, and perhaps there are some things we can do to help it, but I think it has always been our belief and remains our belief that staying out of good clinical evidence is probably not a bad position for us to take.
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