With 5G technology entering the health sector, it shall play a huge role in surgical operations with a success rate as a Chinese surgeon recently has successfully performed the world’s first remote brain surgery with the patient around 3,000 km away from him.
According to reports, Dr. Ling Zhipei from Beijing based PLAGH hospital has remotely implanted a neurostimulator into his patient’s brain suffering from Parkinson’s disease in a clinic on the southern Hainan Island located 3,000 km away on Saturday using 5G technology.
The first pioneering surgery was successful with the patient feeling well post-surgery, rt reports.
The surgeon used a computer connected to the next-generation 5G network developed by Chinese tech giant Huawei.
This newly developed device enabled a near real-time connection, according to Dr. Ling.
“You barely feel that the patient is 3,000 kilometers away,” he said.
The conventional 4G networks do not allow such smooth operations due to video lag and remote control delays.
The worldwide Medical field is constantly making new innovative experiments with the robotic “telesurgery,” the most striking example being American da Vinci Surgical System.
But this technology is yet to make a significant commercial impact due to lack of proper gadgets which can perform well in these operations.
With the 5G network, remote surgery could be possible to even far-away, poor regions, as well as war zones, to receive immediate help from top doctors around the globe.
The 5G enables “extremely low operational delay” during surgery with its large bandwidth and low latency says the manufacturer.
The 5G network has made its debut in remote surgery in January after a Chinese doctor successfully performed an operation on an animal’s liver at Fujian Medical University on the southeastern coast of China.
It was in the mid-March, Huawei’s solutions used the 5G remote surgery also on a liver but this time on the first-ever human, in a hospital in Shenzhen 2,000 km away from the doctor’s workplace in Beijing.
With this breakthrough innovation which could help any patient irrespective of their current region or distance, Huawei’s efforts in 5G have become an eyesore for Washington soon after the US-China trade war unfolded last year.
The US is making efforts to blacklist Huawei worldwide over spying allegations.
Not only Washington but also Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the UK has barred Huawei from helping to build 5G networks.
It also prohibited US government agencies from using Huawei products for “security reasons.