In the late 1990s, the internet was said to open the door to telemedicine which would allow doctors to perform surgery remotely. A pretty neat idea but researchers are starting to realize the long distance and internet latency makes it impossible to do using existing technology.
With the internet now getting faster and latency getting lower, researchers from Switzerland have managed to perform a cinema procedure on the stomachs of pigs located in Hong Kong 9300 km from each other. Researchers control the endoscope machine using the Sony PlayStation Move and PlayStation DualSense controllers.
For safety reasons, the procedure is performed on the stomach of a live pig rather than on a human. Throughout the experiment, the latency can be reduced below 300 ms which allows it to be done successfully.
Researchers from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) and ETH Zurich will now try to further reduce the latency time and improve control precision before the same procedure can be performed on a human patient. This technology is expected to save the lives of patients in the future if they do not have access to a human surgeon.