US doctor performs telesurgery on patient in Africa

Dr Vipul Patel, medical director of the Global Robotic Institute at Orlando's Advent Health, has completed the robotic surgery procedure almost 20,000 times. However, the patient is usually in the same room, or close enough for latency between the doctor’s control console and the robotic surgery device not to be an issue.  

On this occasion, Dr Patel was operating on Fernando da Silva, an Angolan man who was diagnosed with prostate cancer in March. Da Silva was selected as the first patient for a human clinical trial approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to test transcontinental robotic telesurgery. The successful procedure took place on June 14 2025 using a Chinese robotic surgery platform called MedBot.

 To ensure a fast, steady network connection between the two locations, Dr Patel and his team used a direct fibre connection that travelled to Angola via Brazil. This limited latency between Dr Patel’s actions in Florida and the robot’s movements in Angola to about 140 milliseconds – a short enough interval that the brain cannot perceive it. 

“We’re using direct fibre from Orlando to Miami, Miami down to Fortaleza in Brazil, and across the ocean to Luanda in Angola,” Dr Patel told ABC News. “You see the distance is 17,000 km.”

“Throughout the procedure, (latency) was about 140 milliseconds, stable, so there was no perceptible delay in my brain.”

The operation is claimed to be the first international telesurgery performed by a surgeon in the US since a transatlantic procedure in 2001, known as the ‘Lindbergh Operation’. While that pioneering effort was a success, it has not been repeated in the intervening years. According to Dr Patel, major advances in robotic and telecommunications technologies mean that telesurgery is now poised to become more commonplace.

“I think the most need-based case would be telestroke and cardiac,” said Dr Patel. “Those are the two where people die quickly.

“If we could do remote stroke surgery, remote cardiac stenting, clots removals, we would save huge amounts of lives.”

Commenting on the breakthrough, IEEE member and software and robotics expert, Dr Antonio Espingardeiro, said: “Robots are rapidly changing healthcare and making a significant impact in the field of medicine. We’re now seeing AI and robotics become a credible part of our healthcare ecosystem and as the technology becomes more advanced and can efficiently conduct tasks traditionally undertaken by humans, the potential for the technology within the this field is great.