MicroPort surgical robot completes first telesurgery procedures in Africa

By Danielle Kirsh | October 29, 2024

MicroPort recently announced it completed six robot-assisted laparoscopic radical prostatectomy procedures using its MedBot surgical robot in Angola.

The surgeries were led by Dr. Vipul Patel, a robotic urologist from the Global Robotics Institute at AdventHealth in Celebration, Florida, who has performed more than 18,000 robotic prostatectomies. The procedures took place at Complexo Hospitalar de Doenças Cardio-Pulmonar Cardeal Dom Alexandre do Nascimento (Cardeal), a national healthcare center in Angola.

Two of the surgeries were performed remotely, marking the first telesurgery procedures in sub-Saharan Africa using the Toumai system’s capabilities, MicroPort said.

Robotic telesurgery allows a surgeon to conduct operations from a distance using a robotic system connected through telecom networks. In MicroPort’s case, the master robotic console and remote console were positioned at different sites within the Cardeal hospital campus, with the connection supported solely by Toumai’s telesurgery console and Cardeal’s in-house telecom network. The latency time between the systems was maintained at less than 6 milliseconds, enabling seamless surgical precision.

MicroPort said Toumai could be a game-changer for the region

“My team came here to Angola to help the country for a great humanitarian purpose. The potential of robotics, remote surgery, and education is the future of healthcare equity for countries such as Angola,” Patel said. “By being able to operate remotely, we have demonstrated for the first time in Africa the potential route for future humanitarian success. Today was proof of concept with our entire team here, we must proceed with caution and safety in the future.”

Angola, with a population of 38 million, faces a significant challenge in managing prostate cancer, which ranks as the third most common cancer in the country. In 2020, the age-adjusted death rate for prostate cancer in Angola was 33.13 per 100,000 people, placing it 23rd globally for mortality from the disease. While regions like Southern Africa have higher prostate cancer incidence rates, sub-Saharan Africa has higher mortality rates due to limited access to specialized healthcare services, according to MicroPort.

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The Toumai system’s telesurgery function could be a game-changer for regions with limited access to specialized care. The technology allows expert surgeons to remotely perform complex procedures, providing critical care to patients in underserved and remote areas. With its high-speed data transfer and real-time communication capabilities, the system holds promise for reducing healthcare disparities and improving outcomes globally. To date, Toumai has been used in more than 200 telesurgery cases worldwide.

“We are proud to participate in these landmark robot telesurgery cases to bring the Toumai system to this region of the world,” He Chao, founder and president of MicroPort MedBot, said. “In time, we will look back on this date and this achievement and recognize that this was the foundational event for how the delivery of healthcare was revolutionized in Angola with Toumai and the promise of telesurgery.”

Editor’s Note: This article was syndicated from The Robot Report’s sibling site MassDevice.