A company that develops robotic guidance systems for spinal surgery has been sold to a global medical device giant in the biggest acquisition yet in Israel’s prospering medical sector.

Irish American company Medtronic plc has agreed to the $1.64 billion (£1.24 billion) deal to purchase Mazor Robotics, which will include the Israeli company’s research and development operations.

Mazor’s chief executive Ori Hadori said he had received assurances that the company’s R&D operations would remain in Israel.

He said: “The development centre stays here and it will grow and become stronger. I’ve received full approval over this and we will carry on hiring more employees as we have been doing up until now.

“It would have been difficult to develop and market the next generation of robotic surgical guidance systems as a separate company from Medtronic.”

The deal surpasses the $1.1 billion that Japan’s Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma paid for Israeli drug developer Neuroderm last year. However, it is only the fourth largest acquisition of an Israeli company this year, with Frutarom, Orbotech and SodaStream all snapped up by major US companies for multi-billion-dollar sums.

Mazor was founded in 2001 based on technology developed by mechanical engineer Moshe Shaham at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa.

The company struggled for many years to transform the concept of surgical robotics into a marketable product and did not receive regulatory approval from the United States for its Renaissance robotics system for spinal surgery until 2014.

“We believe robotic-assisted procedures are the future of spine surgery and provide surgeons a more precise, repeatable and controlled ability to perform complex procedures,” said Geoff Martha, Medtronic’s executive vice president.

He said his company was “committed to accelerating the adoption of robotic-assisted surgery and transforming spine care through procedural solutions that integrate implants, biologics and enabling technologies.”

Medtronic already has nearly 1,000 employees in Israel in research centres based on previous acquisitions in the country. It also recently received an Israeli government grant to research and develop products for brain monitoring and big data for medicine.