SpringerLink
Log in

Telemedicine and telerobotics: from science fiction to reality

  • Review Article
  • Published:
Updates in Surgery Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Advances in communication technologies have paved the way for telemedicine to transform the delivery of medical care throughout the world. Coinciding developments in minimally invasive surgery and in particular teleoperated robotic surgical systems will allow the surgeon to deliver expert care in remote locations. This study presents a systematic review of telemedicine, focusing on telerobotic surgical systems. A brief historical review of telemedicine and telerobotics is provided, including a description of the various subtypes of telemedicine. Currently available systems and recent experimental utilization, including long-distance remote telesurgery, are discussed. Experimental telerobotic surgical systems and future developments in the field are reviewed and the potential applications are considered. Future challenges to the implementation and opinions on the future direction of telerobotics are provided in this review.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
EUR 32.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or Ebook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. SAGES Group (2000) Guidelines for the surgical practice of telemedicine. Society of American Gastrointestinal Endoscopic Surgeons. Surg Endosc 14(10):975–979

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Ryu S (2012) Telemedicine: opportunities and developments in member states: report on the second global survey on eHealth 2009 (Global Observatory for eHealth Series, Volume 2). Healthc Inform Res 18(2):153–155

    Article  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  3. Barold SS (2003) Willem Einthoven and the birth of clinical electrocardiography a hundred years ago. Card Electrophysiol Rev 7(1):99–104

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  4. Eadie LH, Seifalian AM, Davidson BR (2003) Telemedicine in surgery. Br J Surg 90(6):647–658

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  5. Augestad KM, Lindsetmo R-O (2009) Overcoming distance: video-conferencing as a clinical and educational tool among surgeons. World J Surg 33:1356–1365

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  6. Santomauro M, Reina GA, Stroup SP, L’Esperance JO (2013) Telementoring in robotic surgery. Curr Opin Urol 23(2):141–145

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  7. Institute of Medicine (1996) Telemedicine: a guide to assessing telecommunications for health care. The National Academies Press, Washington, DC

    Google Scholar 

  8. Gruessner V (2015) The history of remote monitoring, telemedicine technology. Mhealthintelligence. https://mhealthintelligence.com/news/the-history-of-remote-monitoring-telemedicine-technology. Accessed 27 May 2018

  9. Vinches A (2018) What you didn’t know about the history of telemedicine. Sightcall. https://sightcall.com/history-telemedicine/. Accessed 27 May 2018

  10. Lanfranco AR, Castellanos AE, Desai JP, Meyers WC (2004) Robotic surgery: a current perspective. Ann Surg 239(1):14–21

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  11. Kwoh YS, Hou J, Jonckheere EA et al (1988) A robot with improved absolute positioning accuracy for CT guided stereotactic brain surgery. IEEE Trans Biomed Eng 35:153–161

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  12. Davies B (2000) Review of robotics in surgery. Proc Inst Mech Eng H 214(1):129–140

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  13. Satava RM (2002) Surgical robotics: the early chronicles: a personal historical perspective. Surg Laparosc Endosc Percutaneous Tech 12:6–16

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Haidegger T, Sandor J, Benyo Z (2011) Surgery in space: the future of robotic telesurgery. Surg Endosc 25(3):681–690

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  15. Aracil R, Buss M, Cobos S, Ferre M, Hirche S, Kuschel M, Peer A (2007) The human role in telerobotics. Springer Tracts Adv Robot 31:11–24

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Avgousti S, Christoforou EG, Panayides AS et al (2016) Medical telerobotic systems: current status and future trends. Biomed Eng Online 15(1):96

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  17. Simon IB (1993) Surgery 2001. Concepts of telepresence surgery. Surg Endosc 7:462–463

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  18. Gambadauro P, Torrejon R (2013) The, “tele” factor in surgery today and tomorrow: implications for surgical training and education. Surg Today 43(2):115–122

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  19. Raison N, Khan MS, Challacombe B (2015) Telemedicine in surgery: what are the opportunities and hurdles to realising the potential? Curr Urol Rep 16(7):43

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  20. Hung AJ, Chen J, Shah A, Gill IS (2018) Telementoring and telesurgery for minimally invasive procedures. J Urol 199(2):355–369. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.juro.2017.06.082

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  21. Hinata N, Miyake H, Kurahashi T, Ando M, Furukawa J, Ishimura T et al (2014) Novel telementoring system for robot-assisted radical prostatectomy: impact on the learning curve. Urology 83:1088–1092

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  22. Marescaux J, Leroy J, Gagner M et al (2011) Transatlantic robot-assisted telesurgery. Nature 413:379

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Marescaux J, Leroy J, Rubino F et al (2002) Transcontinental robot-assisted remote telesurgery: feasibility and potential applications. Ann Surg 235(4):487–492

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  24. Anvari M (2004) Robot-assisted remote telepresence surgery. Surg Innov 11(2):123–128

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Sterbis JR, Hanly EJ, Herman BC (2008) Trans- continental telesurgical nephrectomy using the da Vinci robot in a porcine model. Urology 71:97

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Wirz R, Torres LG, Swaney PJ (2015) An experimental feasibility study on robotic endonasal telesurgery. Neurosurgery 76:479

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  27. WinterGreen Research. Surgical Robots Market Shares, Strategies, and Forecasts, Worldwide, 2015 to 2021

  28. da Vinci Products FAQ (2018) Intuitive Surgical. http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=122359&p=irol-faq. Accessed 28 May 2018

  29. Tognarelli S, Salerno M, Tortora G et al (2015) A miniaturized robotic platform for natural orifice transluminal endoscopic surgery: in vivo validation. Surg Endosc 29:3477

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  30. Reichenbach M, Frederick T, Cubrich L et al (2017) Telesurgery with miniature robots to leverage surgical expertise in distributed expeditionary environments. Mil Med 182(S1):316–321

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  31. Garcia P, Rosen J, Kapoor C, Noakes M, Elbert G, Treat M, Ganous T, Hanson M, Manak J, Hasser C, Rohler D, Satava R (2009) Trauma pod: a semi-automated telerobotic surgical system. Int J Med Robot Comput Assist Surg. 5(2):136–146

    Article  Google Scholar 

  32. Lum MJH, Friedman DCW, Sankaranarayanan G et al (2008) Objective assessment of telesurgical robot systems: telerobotic FLS. Stud Health Technol Inform 132:263–265

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  33. Strickland E (2017) In flesh-cutting task, autonomous robot surgeon beats human surgeons. IEEE spectrum. https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human-os/biomedical/devices/in-fleshcutting-task-autonomous-robot-surgeon-beats-human-surgeons. Accessed 27 May 2018

  34. Bonaci T, Herron J, Yusuf T, Yan J, Kohno T, Chizeck HJ (2015) To make a robot secure: an experimental analysis of cyber security threats against teleoperated surgical robots. http://arxiv.org/abs/1504:04339

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria, Peoria, IL, USA

    Chadrick R. Evans, Melissa G. Medina & Anthony Michael Dwyer

  2. Department of General Surgery, University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria, Peoria, IL, USA

    Chadrick R. Evans & Melissa G. Medina

Authors
  1. Chadrick R. Evans
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Melissa G. Medina
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Anthony Michael Dwyer
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Anthony Michael Dwyer.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Research involving human participants and/or animals

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

For this type of study formal consent is not required.

Funding

No funding was obtained for this project.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Evans, C.R., Medina, M.G. & Dwyer, A.M. Telemedicine and telerobotics: from science fiction to reality. Updates Surg 70, 357–362 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13304-018-0574-9

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13304-018-0574-9

Keywords

Search

Navigation