On September 8, Chinese surgeons successfully performed a remote robotic urological surgery on a patient in Tibet from 4,000 kilometers away, using a high-speed 5G medical applications in healthcare, overcoming extreme altitude and geographic barriers.
Connecting a hospital in Liaoning Province with Nagqu People’s Hospital, situated at 4,500 meters elevation, the procedure applied 5G robotic surgery technology to conduct complex medical care to one of the world’s most remote and underserved regions.
The surgery conducted was not about saving a single patient, but to assess how sophisticated networks coupled with medical skills, doctors can prove that healthcare 5G can provide best-in-class treatment to even the extreme and most underserved areas of the world.
The Challenge Wasn’t Medical but Technological
The surgical team conducted extensive rehearsals to guarantee network stability and equipment functionality in Nagqu’s low-pressure, low-temperature environment – where latency could have jeopardized the operation.
Despite 4,000km apart, the two medical teams were able to collaborate with each other via 5G remote surgery, as if they were in the same operating room.
Nagqu is 4,500 meters in elevation – one of the world’s highest cities – and such a setting presented peculiar challenges.
The thin atmosphere put the medical team based in Tibet under physical stress. At the same time, the equipment itself needed to work perfectly well under lower air pressure and lower temperatures.
The operation linked Professor Liu Zhiyu’s team from the Second Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University in Liaoning Province to Dr. Wang Yanlong, chief of urology at Nagqu People’s Hospital.
To make the operation possible, hospitals partnered with network providers to create stable access to healthcare network resources. The reoperation weeks consisted of numerous simulations and technical dress rehearsals. And physicians also went through the patient’s case thoroughly and came up with a tailored treatment plan.
The team had rehearsed every step of the robotic surgical systems before initiating the procedure, leaving nothing to fate.
“From a medical perspective, this represents a major breakthrough in 5G remote robotic surgery,” Dr. Wang said.
The success of the operation is beyond one patient in Tibet. It marks a new era in global medicine in that it shows that with 5G technology in healthcare, distance and geography no longer must be barriers to effective treatment.
“It proves that even in extremely harsh plateau environments, advanced technology can enable the remote sharing of high-quality medical resources, providing a successful model for addressing healthcare disparities in remote high-altitude regions globally,” Wang added.
The achievement highlights the benefit of 5G technology in healthcare, especially when doctors and advanced equipment are scarce. Therefore, experts assure us that the skill obtained from this process will be applied to more complex processes in the future.
If this type of 5G applications in healthcare operation can be done regularly, full access healthcare previously out of the question will be accessible to rural regions of the world.
As Dr. Wang explained, the operation is technically a success for future medical systems to look up to and build on. It shows the way 5G mobile technology in healthcare can close the gap between rural and urban populations.
5G application in healthcare might prove to be the most precious resource for making life-saving treatment available equally to everyone, no matter what their backgrounds are.
Can such a game-changing operation move from a single experiment to a regular technological medical service? Will people really have full access healthcare privilege?
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