Electronics
to dissect a non-human model in Shanghai, China – all in a staggering feat combining robotic surgeon skills and 5G technology.
Housing swathes of experts under a single roof at the Nicholson Center, the operation was performed live in situ by Dr Vipul Patel, medical director at Florida Hospital Global Robotics Institute, showcasing the immense power of telesurgery to over 200 surgeons, telcos, robotics companies and other experts.
“In the last two decades innovations in robotics and telecom technology have evolved significantly, making low latency telesurgery technically viable,” explained Patel, who specialises in prostate cancer. “My team recently visited China and Japan and were able to successfully demonstrate telesurgery up to 2,500km.” Clearly, then, the event marked a historic breakthrough at the intersection of medical innovation and mobile technology, potentially redefining the future of surgical procedures in an industry that has hitherto been slow to change. In practice, meanwhile, the Florida experiment could soon lead to shorter treatment waitlists for oversubscribed health services, saving time and effort that could have life-saving impacts. Not that any of this can simply happen overnight. Rather, to truly succeed, 5G requires a collaborative ecosystem, one encompassing technological research, regulation, funding, medical expertise and policymakers committing to the innovation.
The wonders of 5G
The impressively low latency of 5G – the time taken for data to travel across the network – played a significant role in February’s digital breakthrough in Orlando. Telesurgery requires reliability of the highest standard, with the potential for outages significantly impacting the outcome of procedures. 5G, for its part, promises almost real-time communication between surgeons and the robotic instruments, enabling highly skilled and sought-after surgeons to perform intricate and life-saving surgeries without needing to be in the same operating room as a patient.
“The latency we achieved was between 300ms and 400ms in round-trip time,” explains Mischa Dohler, VP of emerging technology at Ericsson. “It’s not ideal; the surgeon needs about 100ms round-trip time to not even notice that it’s a remote operation. Anything above 200ms, they need to adapt. But nobody’s going to operate over 10,000km. We wanted to say that we could do this over 10,000km, to prove that it’s possible.” Whatever its technical sophistication, there are plenty of practical reasons to be enthused by the
Medical Device Developments /
www.nsmedicaldevices.com
science too. By untethering care from physical space, 5G makes surgery available to those who might not otherwise have access due to geographical location or socioeconomic status. It could also relieve waiting, enabling remote capabilities to perform surgeries across regions and time zones. “Stroke and heart are the first two use cases,” says Dohler, “as about half a million Americans will have a stroke every year, yet only 10% receive the necessary care in time, so there’s a huge cost to the families and to the healthcare system. If we can democratise that and have a highly skilled surgeon in New York able to reach the north-east of the US, for example, we think there’s a real case there.” Not that patients are the only ones to benefit. While implementing the technology is costly, it also has the potential to lessen fatigue and increase efficiency, while minimising the need for surgeons as well as patients to travel, offering a better work- life balance and potentially reducing burnout rates.
Collaborative ecosystem
The Orlando experiment was the summation of 40 years of innovation and collaboration in the medical field. In the 1980s, Rick Savata realised that utilising high-precision instruments, despite slowing down an operation, could demonstrate much greater control and less blood loss for patients – so much so that they could be released from hospitals sooner. Ten years on, in 1995, Fred Moll founded Intuitive Surgical, which drove activity in Silicon Valley, bringing robotic surgery to the world stage. Then, in the early 2000s, Jacques Marescaux aspired to democratise robotic surgery and conducted the first telesurgery using fibre. Mischa Dohler aimed to build on this with the idea of harnessing 5G technology for robotic surgery. After collaborating with surgeons at King’s College London and confirming the feasibility of the idea, they built the first demo
While implementing the technology is costly, it also has the potential to lessen fatigue and increase efficiency.
$590bn
The projected global growth of the 5G infrastructure market by 2032, from $34.22bn in 2024, at a CAGR of 42.7%.
Fortune Business Insights 30
The number of countries new 5G networks were expected to be deployed in during 2023, with the number of 5G connections anticipated to be doubled by 2025.
GSMA 79
MAD.vertise/
Shutterstock.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150
