Public information-seeking about orthopedic surgical robotics: a decade-scale infodemiological analysis and forecast...

Public information-seeking is an underused indicator of the diffusion of robotic-assisted surgery, yet no study has compared it jointly across the three highest-volume orthopedic domains or projected it toward the coming decade. Using Google Trends relative search volume (RSV: a term's share of all searches in a given month, rescaled 0-100 against the highest month of the study window, and not a count of searches) retrieved programmatically (Health category, worldwide, January 2014-June 2026; 150 monthly observations per term), we quantified and forecast public search interest in robotic knee, hip, and spine surgery. Mann-Kendall and Theil-Sen statistics confirmed significant monotonic growth in all three domains (P < 0.001). Knee interest rose from a mean RSV of 3.0 to 77.0 and hip interest emerged from below the reporting threshold to 15.1, while spine interest rose from a censored baseline to 18.8 and showed the steepest recent monthly growth of the three domains (3.7% versus 2.5% for knee and 2.2% for hip) over the final three years; because the hip and spine baselines lay at or below the platform's censoring threshold, fold-changes are baseline-dependent and are not used here as primary effect measures. Seasonal decomposition revealed consistent February and early-summer peaks and December troughs across all domains. Seasonal ARIMA models, selected by Akaike information criterion, project further three- to four-fold increases in arthroplasty-domain interest by 2030 (knee approximately 283; hip approximately 49), while spine forecasts remained conservative (approximately 21) owing to early censoring, with sensitivity analyses suggesting a plausible range up to approximately 112. Lay terminology outnumbered technical terminology roughly 10:1, though technical-term searching has recently accelerated; aggregate search data cannot identify who issues a query, so this shift is not attributed to any particular group of searchers. These findings indicate that English-language public search interest in robotic orthopedic surgery is rising rapidly and most steeply for spine surgery, and that infodemiological signals, being transparent, freely available, and continuously updated, can complement clinical evidence and institutional capacity metrics to inform technology investment, patient counseling, and research prioritization through 2030. Search interest reflects information-seeking behavior; its conversion into clinical demand was not measured and should not be assumed.