Dive Brief:
- Florida Hospital Nicholson Center in Celebration, Florida announced it recently tested internet lag time for a simulated robotic surgery in Fort Worth, Texas—1,200 miles away from the surgeon using a da Vinci robotic surgical unit.
- The hospital uses a "Mimic Simulator" with virtual patients. Nicholson Center CTO Roger Smith said the facility has been able to compensate for slow Internet connections or outages via backup connections.
- The tests studied two things: How distance from the robot affects Internet lag time and how much lag time surgeons can tolerate before they lose confidence in their ability to perform the procedure. The lag time tested in the experiment ranged from 30 to 150 milliseconds, which was undetectable by the surgeons. However, above 300 milliseconds, surgeons were able to detect lag time and at 600 milliseconds, they lost confidence in performing a procedure.
Dive Insight:
The U.S. Department of Defense is funding Nicholson's testing via a $4.9-million grant. Although liability questions and regulatory guidelines need to be addressed, the benefits of telesurgery are obvious: Patients in rural locations could receive top care via specialists without the expense of travel.
"These results indicate that modern, well-connected facilities possess the communication bandwidth need to safely perform telesurgery today," Roger Smith told Computer World. "It appears that we have the technology but are still waiting for business cases and regulatory permissions to open the door to telesurgery."