A patient in Beijing is being operated on by a robot controlled from the Italian capital, Rome, over 8,000 kilometers away. The two-way communication may be happening between cities on opposite sides of the world, but the robot performed the surgery as if the doctor was in the room.
00:00:00.000This patient in Beijing is being operated on by a robot controlled from the Italian capital, Rome, over 8,000 kilometers away.
00:00:09.040The Chinese team, including a backup surgeon, watched the operation closely at the third medical center of the People's Liberation Army General Hospital.
00:00:18.320Professor Zhang Xu guided the robotic arms remotely via surgical console to complete delicate work of removing a lesion from the patient's prostate.
00:00:27.980The two-way communication may be happening between cities on opposite sides of the world, but the robot performed the surgery as if the doctor was in the room.
00:00:39.120The delay or latency was only 135 milliseconds, below the 200 millisecond standard suggested by various medical studies for telesurgery.
00:00:48.800The biggest problem with remote surgery is communication and whether there is any delay.
00:00:53.440Today, there was almost no delay, the same as an on-site surgery.
00:00:57.040To me, it was really an historical experience, an historical moment.
00:01:03.880The fact that he was able to do it in Rome, it makes us very, very happy.
00:01:09.560After the success of the operation, the team says it will experiment with using the technology to direct surgical treatments for the military in frontline and remote environments.