es in surgical instruments for abdominal surgeries. As the abdominal surgical techniques advance towards minimising surgical trauma, surgical instruments are enhanced to support such objective through the exploration of magnetic based systems. With this design approach, the surgical devices are given the capabilities to be fully inserted intra-abdominally to achieve access to all abdominal quadrants, without the conventional rigid link connection with the external unit. The variety of intraabdominal surgical devices are anchored, guided and actuated by external units, with power and torque transmitted across the abdominal wall through magnetic linkage. This addresses many constraints encountered by conventional laparoscopic tools, such as loss of triangulation, fulcrum effect and the loss / lack of dexterity for surgical tasks. Design requirements in the aspects of clinical considerations are also discussed to aid the successful development of magnetic surgical instruments.