The Network Revolution Needed For Remote Surgery (thestack.com)

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The Network Revolution Needed For Remote Surgery (thestack.com)

Posted by samzenpus on Monday January 4, 2016 @10:38AM from the from-the-comfort-of-your-own-home dept.

An anonymous reader writes: IEEE researchers are proposing new standards for haptic codecs over software-defined 5G networks in order to achieve the ambitious 1ms latency and reliability required for the 'tactile internet'. It's a trivial consideration when hugging chickens over a network, more serious for applications of telesurgery, and a proposed leap in network quality that seems likely to yield benefits for general data streams as well.

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One word by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-04 10:42 · Score: 0

Logan's Run. Farah Fawcett. DANGER!
Do Not Want by xxxJonBoyxxx · 2016-01-04 10:44 · Score: 2, Insightful

>> more serious for applications of telesurgery
Do not want. If I'm under the knife, I'd like a doctor present in the room, not some dude with a "medical degree" dialing in from the other side of the world while moonlighting from his IT helpdesk job.
1. Re:Do Not Want by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-04 10:53 · Score: 1, Funny
  
  Wow what a sense of entitlement. You expect a pro to be in the room during your surgery? Check your privilege shitlord. There are plenty out there who have no access to such surgery at all.
2. Re:Do Not Want by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-04 10:59 · Score: 0
  
  Wow what a sense of entitlement. You expect a pro to be in the room during your surgery? Check your privilege shitlord. There are plenty out there who have no access to such surgery at all.
  I guess they get to die.
3. Re:Do Not Want by The-Ixian · 2016-01-04 11:02 · Score: 1
  
  I am seeing a lot of the "shitlord" word going around recently... perhaps I am just noticing it more. But it still has a novelty factor that makes me chuckle every time I see it used.
  Thanks ;)
  
  --
  My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
4. Re:Do Not Want by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-04 11:09 · Score: 0
  
  Must be wonderful to be a rich white male SHITLORD.
5. Re:Do Not Want by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-04 11:21 · Score: 1
  
  I feel the need to point out that in your "holier than thou" entitlement rant, what makes you think that if an area can't afford to have a surgeon around, they're going to be able to afford this equipment, both the purchase (which may be donated) and the upkeep (which people donating tend to forget about)? Throw in unexplainable transient issues in technology, yeah, I don't want my surgeon to teleconference in. I don't think it's fair to think the poor should be grateful for it either. And I'm speaking from the point of a guy who designs computer networks for a living.
6. Re:Do Not Want by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-04 11:21 · Score: 0
  
  Well then they can enjoy dying at the hands of a quack.
7. Re:Do Not Want by Anonymous+Psychopath · 2016-01-04 11:33 · Score: 2
  
  Telemedicine is for people who would otherwise lack access to care.
  
  --
  Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
8. Re:Do Not Want by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-04 11:34 · Score: 1
  
  I am seeing a lot of the "shitlord" word going around recently...
  The people that use that word together with the word "privilege" are usually really, really stupid. Just useless human beings. Watch out for them, they can be bat-shit crazy too.
9. Re: Do Not Want by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2016-01-04 11:46 · Score: 2
  
  The interesting question is whether allowing surgeons to telecommute makes you more or less likely to be chopped open by some hack.
  On the minus side, we've certainly all experienced the fact that when the call center gets off shored it is because nobody gives a damn and a cheaper labor force can do a bad job for less. On the other hand, there's the old quip about 'what do you call a med school grad in the bottom ten percent of his class? Doctor.' and the fact that only having access to on-site talent means that you are substantially at the mercy of the quality of whatever medical experts happen to be where you need treatment, which varies enormously between wealthy medical hubs and low density and/or really poor backwaters.
  Are you better off with whatever surgeon lives within commuting distance, because they can't hire any cheap 'n cheerful bottom feeder within your light cone? Or are you better off with any surgeon in your light cone; because they aren't limited to recruiting only the second-stringers willing to settle for the lousy location/lower salary/inferior institutional prestige?
10. Re:Do Not Want by dissy · 2016-01-04 11:54 · Score: 1
  
  [Transcript of operator overheard in surgery control operations]
  OK lets just cut this open here. Now spread these ribs open. Yes that's it, one more cut and clamp and...
  Uh oh sir, it looks like your Oracle licencing isn't up to date. I'm contractually bound not to support this setup as-is. You'll need to contact your account representative first.
  I'll just drain this general anesthetic out of you lickity split and let you go do what you need to do, then please call our main number back and reference ticket #429437
  Have a good day and thank you for using Jonney Surgen!
11. Re: Do Not Want by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-04 12:00 · Score: 0
  
  Imagine if you got
12. Re:Do Not Want by Fwipp · 2016-01-04 12:10 · Score: 1
  
  You know that they're all anti-SJ trolls, right? I'm an SJW, a commie, and a tranny, and I can't recall anytime I saw anyone seriously say "shitlord" since, like, 2012. But for some reason all the anti-SJ people think that's how we talk. It makes them all really easy to spot, to be honest. They're also usually gonna say "privilege" or "trigger" in a way that doesn't make any sense, or claim to be, idk, spatulakin or something.
13. Re:Do Not Want by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-04 12:51 · Score: 0
  
  No it is not. It is to lower the cost by allowing fewer doctors to serve more patients in a larger geographical area (ideally global) than they could if they had to be in the room with the patient.
14. Re:Do Not Want by JoeMerchant · 2016-01-04 13:03 · Score: 1
  
  Telemedicine is for people who would otherwise lack access to care.
  Such as: in the ISS, Antartica, on Mars...
15. Re:Do Not Want by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-04 14:05 · Score: 0
  
  Tsk tsk tsk. Such microaggressive behavior! Report to your nearest re-education camp.
16. Re:Do Not Want by Pseudonym · 2016-01-04 14:43 · Score: 1
  
  If I'm under the knife, I'd like a doctor present in the room, not some dude with a "medical degree" dialing in from the other side of the world while moonlighting from his IT helpdesk job.
  If you got appendicitis in Antarctica, I wager you'd be happy to have a surgeon fixing it remotely (assuming the technology was up to the task) than the local GP with no surgical qualifications.
  
  --
  sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
17. Re:Do Not Want by ZecretZquirrel · 2016-01-04 15:39 · Score: 1
  
  Probably just a typo of "shitload". That's how these things get started.
18. Re:Do Not Want by Greyfox · 2016-01-04 16:23 · Score: 1
  
  So, Like, Missouri?
  
  --
  I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
19. Re: Do Not Want by Ol+Olsoc · 2016-01-04 16:27 · Score: 2
  
  The interesting question is whether allowing surgeons to telecommute makes you more or less likely to be chopped open by some hack.
  Now that we are planning on making surgery part of the Internet of Things, it looks like the transition is just about complete. Hopefully the process will be 100 percent secure.
  A side issue is that those really poor backwaters you refer to will be hard pressed to afford the machinery, and of course the personnel to run it calibrate it, sterilize it, and keep it in working order.
  And I'm really curious about just what this is supposed to free up. If I might, I can relay the experience I had just a few weeks ago. My better half had surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff and a few other things related to a very old surgery on he shoulder.
  We did get a renowned expert to do the work. He is based in a very large medical center. So on his day for surgery, which is Fridays, he travels the mile to the hospital, ( it is a huge complex) spends the entire day doing surgeries, and it is a long and busy day.
  So I'm trying to figure out how exactly this is supposed to be improved. The actual surgery was relatively short. She had consults and spent a lot of time with the surgeon as he personally examined and manipulated her shoulder and interpreted the x-rays and MRI and sonograms. Then he held a consult with her local doctor. This is not incidental stuff - this is an integral part of what makes him so highly regarded.
  So the concept that I think people have in their heads is of some hyper-surgeon who spends an entire day doing only surgery, and does only that for his entire workweek.
  I suppose this could do world class surgery if you hired a world class surgeon to do the surgery remotely, and another world class one to examine the patient and do the manipulations needed, and to do the consulting. I do doubt however that it will ever be the assembly line surgeries many seem to think will happen, in no small part because the whole process is very painstaking, and I suspect the surgery portion can be exhausting.
  And of course, now the internet of things aspect means another layer of issues on top of everything else.
  
  --
  The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
20. Re:Do Not Want by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-04 18:01 · Score: 0
  
  >> more serious for applications of telesurgery
  Do not want. If I'm under the knife, I'd like a doctor present in the room, not some dude with a "medical degree" dialing in from the other side of the world while moonlighting from his IT helpdesk job.
  Right.
  But that 8 year old kid in sub-Saharan Africa who needs an emergency appendectomy may not mind if the only surgeon available happens to perform it from Boston.
21. Re:Do Not Want by x0ra · 2016-01-04 19:06 · Score: 1
  
  I doubt they'll either be in an area with low latency internet...
22. Re:Do Not Want by ottothecow · 2016-01-04 19:26 · Score: 2
  
  Hell, I just try to remotely control my computer from a distance and it will suck ass at random moments in time.
  Some days I can load up a citrix desktop from across the country, RDP to a machine back in my state from that citrix session, and use it so well I almost forget I am remote (although for some reason, Chrome is barely functional over this connection...lags like hell, even if it is just in the background and not the active window ...IE works fine). Yes, I know a Remote Desktop Gateway Server would save me the shitty citrix layer that I use for absolutely nothing besides the RDP client...but I guess IT doesn't like it.
  And then other days, somewhere in the middle, something chokes and even a bare citrix session is barely usable
  
  --
  Bottles.
23. Re: Do Not Want by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-04 20:23 · Score: 0
  
  You have no right to use so many trigger words in one post.
24. Re: Do Not Want by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2016-01-05 02:38 · Score: 1
  
  It is difficult to imagine 'telemedicine' being competitive for elective operations, at least until the robots are so advanced that the human on the other end of the line is increasingly redundant. It becomes more theoretically interesting if the patient can't be safely moved or the procedure can't be safely delayed. I don't know what proportion of operations are actually that urgent. Some are, certainly; but those may be more dramatic than they are common.
25. Re:Do Not Want by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-05 02:45 · Score: 0
  
  remember the offshoring of IT people to 3rd world countries because they are cheaper? telemedicine is for doing the same with doctors. your next surgeon will be in a callcenter in india.
26. Re:Do Not Want by leonardluen · 2016-01-05 02:49 · Score: 2
  
  getting 1ms latency to mars to allow this would be quite an amazing feat and would rewrite our knowledge of physics.
27. Re:Do Not Want by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-05 02:55 · Score: 0
  
  >> more serious for applications of telesurgery
  Do not want. If I'm under the knife, I'd like a doctor present in the room, not some dude with a "medical degree" dialing in from the other side of the world while moonlighting from his IT helpdesk job.
  Right.
  But that 8 year old kid in sub-Saharan Africa who needs an emergency appendectomy may not mind if the only surgeon available happens to perform it from Boston.
  And I'm pretty sure it's going to be cheaper to just hire a competent doctor to make an in-person visit, than it will be to setup a reliable enough network to use for a surgery from Boston.
28. Re:Do Not Want by gstoddart · 2016-01-05 02:59 · Score: 1
  
  I don't think anybody is suggesting telesurgery is going to be the normal way of doing things, or that you would routinely outsource it.
  But if you're in some remote place and need critical care, it makes sense. Oil rigs or other remote and dangerous places make sense.
  AFAIK, this is real surgeons trying to solve real problems, not someone trying to come up with an outsourcing model.
  But if you start bleeding out, the surgeon needs to respond as fast as he would if in the same room to fix it. And I think the whole point of TFA is, we're not quite there yet.
  
  --
  Lost at C:>. Found at C.
29. Re:Do Not Want by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-05 04:01 · Score: 0
  
  Watch out for them, they can be bat-shit crazy too.
  Does that make them Bat-Shit lords?
  To the Bat-Shit Cave!
30. Re: Do Not Want by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · 2016-01-05 05:20 · Score: 1
  
  Ok, put on your glove.
  Ok.
  Ok, now touch this mystery object.
  Ok...Gross...gross! You fucking diseased pig!
  
  --
  (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
31. Re:Do Not Want by JoeMerchant · 2016-01-05 09:26 · Score: 1
  
  Point being, telemedicine to Mars has value, and will never have 1ms latency (unless we do rewrite the laws of physics.)
32. Re:Do Not Want by leonardluen · 2016-01-05 10:12 · Score: 1
  
  Yeah there probable is value. However, best case scenario there is something like a 30 minute round trip for communications to mars, so for a medical robot to have value in such an environment it would likely need to be able to do most procedures autonomously. with the doctor just checking on the outcome after it has been completed.
33. Re:Do Not Want by RockDoctor · 2016-01-05 11:22 · Score: 1
  
  Getting 1ms latency from ANY hospital (on soil) to anywhere (on soil or non-floating ice) in Antarctica would also require a re-write of physics. The Drake Passage is about 3 times too wide for that to be possible.
  
  --
  Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
34. Re:Do Not Want by RockDoctor · 2016-01-05 11:39 · Score: 1
  
  You might be mis-remembering this :
  In about 1970 a Russian base had a case of appendicitis after going into lockdown because of weather. The "GP" (who was not your average GP, but one carefully chosen for resourcefulness and experience, because this was a base going into a winter lockdown with temperatures going down to about -90degC ; not your average GP) examined the patient, worked through the options, tried antibiotic treatment, but eventually had to concur that it''s appendicitis. And operation is the only option (because the antibiotics didn't work.
  So the "GP" did the appendicetomy. No great drama. First appendicetomy that he'd done, but the patient survived.
  The "GP" wrote it up into the formal press. The novel part of the procedure was the arrangement of mirrors that the "GP" constructed in order to be able to see the operation site (a sort of analogue far-off-vision (Greek-Latin : TELE-vision) system ; also he had to be very careful with the application of drugs to suppress sensation in the patient without rendering the "GP" unconscious. In case you hadn't guessed, the patient was the "GP".
  
  --
  Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
May as well try to rewrite the rules of physics by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-04 10:44 · Score: 0

Without instantaneous quantum communication (entangled electrons), you're never going to have 1ms latency.
1 ms ping time by wendyo · 2016-01-04 10:48 · Score: 5, Interesting

1 ms of ping time at the speed of light only gives you at best 150 km.
1. Re:1 ms ping time by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-04 11:02 · Score: 1
  
  With a robot between the surgeon and the patient, the ping requirement might not be so strict. Open heart surgery without stopping the heart while the surgeon can operate on the organ as if it would have been stopped should be one of the more demanding and amazing applications of the surgical robots. Human reaction time is lot longer than the 1 ms, so it comes down to the quality of the surgeon-robot-patient interfaces.
2. Re:1 ms ping time by TeknoHog · 2016-01-04 11:30 · Score: 1
  
  1 ms of ping time at the speed of light only gives you at best 150 km.
  Pfffft. Amateurs.
  
  --
  Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
3. Re: 1 ms ping time by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2016-01-04 11:49 · Score: 1
  
  And to get that we'd need to replace all that laggy legacy fiber with a series of tubes pumped down as close to vacuum as possible, run perfectly straight between nodes. That might get costly.
4. Re:1 ms ping time by JoeMerchant · 2016-01-04 13:09 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  the speed of light = 299 792 458 m / s
  Or, 299.792458 km / ms
  Well done, sir - round trip time of 1ms happens at 93.14 miles, or less in slower medium (~60 miles in glass). For example, for visible light the refractive index of glass is typically around 1.5, meaning that light in glass travels at c / 1.5 200000 km/s; the refractive index of air for visible light is about 1.0003, so the speed of light in air is about 299700 km/s (about 90 km/s slower than c). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
5. Re:1 ms ping time by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-04 13:38 · Score: 1
  
  Not only that, but in the optical fiber, the photonss travel a zigzag path that probably adds at least 50% to the travel distance.
6. Re:1 ms ping time by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-04 13:49 · Score: 0
  
  Don't forget curvature of the earth if on surface
7. Re:1 ms ping time by LilBlackKittie · 2016-01-04 20:13 · Score: 1
  
  No, they don't. Oversimplified: long haul stretches of fibre are "single mode" to prevent the signal dispersion blurring the edges of 0 and 1 transitions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
8. Re: 1 ms ping time by Bengie · 2016-01-05 05:12 · Score: 1
  
  Researchers create fiber network that operates at 99.7% speed of light, smashes speed and latency records 2013 http://www.extremetech.com/com...
What is up with this Internet surgery fascination? by Spy+Handler · 2016-01-04 10:53 · Score: 2

When I'm getting a surgery, I don't want it interrupted because a Comcast router craps out or a neighbor starts torrenting 4k videos.
I mean, I can understand the need if there were only a few surgeons in the world, but I live in a city and I look around and there's lots of surgeons. Also, in small number of cases where a rare specialty surgeon is needed, airplane tickets are cheaper than telerobotic equipment.
Fundamental Limit by namgge · 2016-01-04 10:53 · Score: 2

Hmm. If a 1ms latency is what's needed, the speed of light through the network limits the separation of the patient and surgeon to about 100 miles or so.
If a truck filled with tapes beats the bandwidth of the fastest network, I guess an ambulance with the patient in it is the metric that needs to be to beaten here.
1. Re:Fundamental Limit by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-04 10:58 · Score: 0
  
  Hmm. If a 1ms latency is what's needed, the speed of light through the network limits the separation of the patient and surgeon to about 100 miles or so.
  If a truck filled with tapes beats the bandwidth of the fastest network, I guess an ambulance with the patient in it is the metric that needs to be to beaten here.
  A medivac helicopter might have the same bandwidth with a lower latency then the ambulance.
2. Re:Fundamental Limit by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-04 11:18 · Score: 1
  
  Hmm. If a 1ms latency is what's needed, the speed of light through the network limits the separation of the patient and surgeon to about 100 miles or so.
  Actually it's about 1/3rd of that. "The Speed of Light" as most people call it is really the speed of light in a vacuum. Not only does light move slower through a physical medium (like glass or plastic fibers) but in optical networks the light does a lot of bouncing around... it's not going in a straight line.
  I think the idea they're getting at is, particularly in dense urban areas, having a central medical office and then having smaller, remote surgery rooms located within about 15 to 20 miles of the main building. You'd have them connected back to the main facility using a direct point-to-point fiber circuit, it wouldn't use the internet at all. It's possible in such a scenario to get sub millisecond one-way latency.
3. Re:Fundamental Limit by JoeMerchant · 2016-01-04 13:22 · Score: 1
  
  You're right about the realities of latency.
  Personally, the 1ms number sounds like it was pulled out of somebody's nether regions.
  If I play a single 100us pulse through a speaker, you hear it as a click. If I play two pulses, you hear two clicks - until they are about 2ms apart - at less than 2ms the clicks begin to merge and by 1.5ms they are basically indistinguishable from a single click.
  Joe Supertwitch the surgeon says he can't frag that lesion perfectly unless he's got less than 1ms lag time, Joe Supertwitch needs to suck it up and learn to deal with the lag, unless he'd rather spend an hour in traffic getting to the surgery center.
4. Re:Fundamental Limit by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-04 17:24 · Score: 0
  
  Its a pretext to do away with Net Neutrality, and telesurgery fits the bill (if you don't examine their specs and claims too closely -- as you just did).
  If they were sincere, their requirements would be more realistic... but also less compelling in terms of dustbinning neutrality.
5. Re:Fundamental Limit by Bengie · 2016-01-05 05:15 · Score: 1
  
  Takes about 5ms for a signal to get from your brain to your hands. I'm sure the 1ms is taking about something else, like jitter.
Is it even possible? by The-Ixian · 2016-01-04 10:56 · Score: 2

Ok, one question, probably stupid.
Is 1ms latency even physically possible if the 2 nodes are on opposite sides of the world?
Or are they talking about "within the same city" kind of network?
Also... 5G? Over-the-air? Wireless is not my first thought for medium when I think of low latency...

--
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
1. Re:Is it even possible? by Mishotaki · 2016-01-04 11:04 · Score: 1
  
  Also... 5G? Over-the-air? Wireless is not my first thought for medium when I think of low latency...
  wireless is not my first medium for a stable connection that won't crap on while he's cutting you up...
2. Re:Is it even possible? by Melkman · 2016-01-04 11:47 · Score: 1
  
  Using fiber or copper on the other hand reduces the maximum distance with 30% due to the slower propagation of signals in those media.
3. Re:Is it even possible? by jon3k · 2016-01-04 11:54 · Score: 2
  
  Speed of light is 186 miles per millisecond, so no, not possible. Even if you could transmit it in a perfectly straight line in a vacuum you couldn't get it around the world in 1ms.
  
  By the way, Google will do the conversion for you automatically, just search for "speed of light in miles per millisecond" or something along those lines.
4. Re:Is it even possible? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-04 11:57 · Score: 0
  
  Agreed, the 'limiting factor' is unlikely to be the network but the actual physical laws of the universe. This may be useful in very limited situations (say having more expertise in an ambulance while trying to get a patient to the hospital) but I don't see this providing 'general purpose benefit' in scheduled surgery where it would be much easier, faster, more cost effective not to mention safer just to have the Surgeon show up in an operating theatre.
  Another potentially useful scenario is in battlefields/wars (presuming our robot protectors & drones aren't actually fighting them that is) where the medic doesn't have to risk being close to the action to help the injured.
5. Re:Is it even possible? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-04 12:41 · Score: 0
  
  Is 1ms latency even physically possible if the 2 nodes are on opposite sides of the world?
  Not with any technology we know of, that's faster than light.
  Best ping time I get, over a dedicated fiber loop linking our two datacenters about 120 miles apart, is just over 4ms.
6. Re:Is it even possible? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-04 13:16 · Score: 0
  
  too lazy to login....
  Wait, people need to google division by a power of 10? I mean, I could understand if we were in some random ass base... but we're not so...
  Seriously?
7. Re:Is it even possible? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-04 18:58 · Score: 0
  
  High Frequency Traders use licensed microwave links simply because the (A) path is shorted compared to the fiber path (B) faster than glass
  Still very reliable when properly engineered, and don't suffer from the ever-increasing "backhoe-fade".
  Captcha: dispel
8. Re:Is it even possible? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-05 04:45 · Score: 0
  
  Theoretic minimum latency would be about 86ms ping time if you could send the signal through the center of the earth at the speed of light.
9. Re:Is it even possible? by Bengie · 2016-01-05 05:31 · Score: 1
  
  The best ping I got from my home connection is 6ms to a Google PoP in Chicago, about 300 miles away. I actually only got that for a short bit when my ISP was using their fail-over when upgrading their Level 3 link. The next day, my ping was back to a sluggish 7ms. I'm showing a 0.0095% packetloss to 8.8.8.8 over the past 10 days and a range of 0.14ms-0.6ms of jitter to several public NTP servers ranging from 300 miles to 1200 miles away. Don't assume the furthest NTP server has the worst jitter, it has the best. 0.14ms of jitter over a 2400mile 30ms route from Midwest USA to New York.
  
  $45/month for 100/100 dedicated fiber.
Its all fun and games... by fsckinhippies · 2016-01-04 11:00 · Score: 1

until Comcast craps out. How far can they take this last mile over-subscription? What carrier would take on the liability of a patients life based on their QoS. Verizon would, but then they would end up suing the patient's family in the end.
Use a leased line. by tlambert · 2016-01-04 11:01 · Score: 2

Use a leased line.
Problem solved.
Your max is 100 miles anyway.
1. Re:Use a leased line. by kevmeister · 2016-01-04 16:26 · Score: 1
  
  Use a leased line.
  Problem solved.
  Your max is 100 miles anyway.
  Why would you think that a leased line is immune to noise and other sources of data loss? There is absolutely no physical difference in lines. Yes, there is no congestion, but that is far easier to deal with than line noise, cosmic rays and backhoes.
  
  --
  Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer, Retired
2. Re:Use a leased line. by tlambert · 2016-01-04 23:09 · Score: 1
  
  Use a leased line.
  Problem solved.
  Your max is 100 miles anyway.
  Why would you think that a leased line is immune to noise and other sources of data loss? There is absolutely no physical difference in lines. Yes, there is no congestion, but that is far easier to deal with than line noise, cosmic rays and backhoes.
  What about intentional denial of service attacks or take-overs in the middle of your heart surgery because someone really, really doesn't like something you posted in your Facebook status, such as "no longer in a relationship", or they found out you were the idiot who posts the "Moo" thing on Slashdot, or they found out you're the person who calls them from Florida and blows the cruise ship horn in their ear in order to scam money from them, or they find out you're the guy who signed off on their IRS audit?
3. Re:Use a leased line. by kevmeister · 2016-01-05 05:40 · Score: 1
  
  These are not the sort of issues that most are concerned with, though they are legitimate. As far as spying goes, leased lines are no more immune from targeted attacks (specific wire taps) than any other connection, though they do avoid mass data collections (e.g. GCHQ data sweeps).
  The point of the article is that common issues with "normal" networks such as congestion and data loss need magical networking. My point was that leased lines are not a solution to the general problems that are most likely to cause a remote surgery to fail and don't mitigate the most intractable issues that remote manipulation of vital or critical "things". Their only real benefit is eliminating congestion and a minor side benefit is keeping data away from mass surveillance.
  FWIW, I have been involved network configuration for trans-continental physics experiments (San Diego control of New Jersey hardware) and am very aware of the issues. We had our own switched network, ESnet, running over leased lines with known and stable latency and used CoS capability to provide best possible connectivity, but all experiments were designed to be "fail safe" so that network disruption would not damage the equipment, though it could cause the experiment to fail.
  
  --
  Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer, Retired
"Telesurgery" and "5G networks" by dohzer · 2016-01-04 11:07 · Score: 3, Interesting

"Telesurgery" and "5G networks" should never be mentioned in the same story.
1. Re:"Telesurgery" and "5G networks" by ItsJustAPseudonym · 2016-01-04 11:27 · Score: 1
  
  You beat me to it. The only possible reason for a 5G network to be involved with telesurgery, would be to serve as a backup to the backup wired network, which itself is a backup to the primary wired network.
2. Re:"Telesurgery" and "5G networks" by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-04 12:28 · Score: 0
  
  Somehow this magical 5G things has lower latency? Never actually seen them address that part.....
  I just wish my pings times would get back down to my old 640K DSL level 20 years ago. At some point I finally had to trade for some bandwidth :(
3. Re:"Telesurgery" and "5G networks" by Ol+Olsoc · 2016-01-04 16:44 · Score: 1
  
  You beat me to it. The only possible reason for a 5G network to be involved with telesurgery, would be to serve as a backup to the backup wired network, which itself is a backup to the primary wired network.
  You have to look at the bigger picture. This is another version of what I call BPL syndrome. BPL was Broadband over Power Line, which promised to bring you the internet without running extra cables - right from a power socket. Problem was, it delivered DSL speeds at best, interfered with amateur radio and trans polar commercial airline flights and could be interrupted easily by kids with Citizen Band radios. And it might just accidentally deliveras much as a couple KV to your household wiring in the efvent of failure. Didn't work for crap.
  But it sounded awesome. So it was a grab to get investor and public money. Same with the Cellular service right by the GPS service - sounds good! Failed
  So if you're still reading, this is more of the same crap - freaking 5G will save people lives! No it won't.
  
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  The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Re:What is up with this Internet surgery fascinati by epyT-R · 2016-01-04 11:11 · Score: 1

They want to do with surgeons what they already did to IT workers.
Re:What is up with this Internet surgery fascinati by Sir_Eptishous · 2016-01-04 11:14 · Score: 1

They want to do with surgeons what they already did to IT workers.
Bingo

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We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Re:What is up with this Internet surgery fascinati by epyT-R · 2016-01-04 11:16 · Score: 1

Woe to all who need any sort of common procedure.
Remote surgery over 5G wireless? by phizi0n · 2016-01-04 11:17 · Score: 1

First of all, remote surgery is stupid. Having a remote doctor advising while a local doctor does the procedure is all fine and good, but having some expensive robot do the work that a remote doctor tells it to do is dumb for a variety of reasons, the most obvious being cost. How many hospitals would waste money on a remote surgery robot rather than hiring more doctors or better doctors...
Assuming that remote surgery robots ever did become popular, why the fuck would they even consider connecting them over any form of wireless communication? No matter what codecs or protocols you used they would still be susceptible to frequency jamming. I can't imagine any scenario where a surgery robot would need to be located somewhere without a stable and secure wired connection where it would still have a 5G connection.
1. Re:Remote surgery over 5G wireless? by ItsJustAPseudonym · 2016-01-04 11:30 · Score: 1
  
  How many hospitals would waste money on a remote surgery robot rather than hiring more doctors or better doctors
  A few years ago I read an article about hospitals that bought telesurgery equipment to compete with other hospitals in the same area. So it apparently happens.
  
  The punchline? The telesurgery equipment sits idle much of the time.
2. Re: Remote surgery over 5G wireless? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2016-01-04 11:55 · Score: 1
  
  Imagine that we re-brand the 'expensive robot' as a 'turnkey managed surgery solution' or a 'patient outcome appliance' and ask your IT minions about whether HQ likes capital costs or expensive human resources less...
3. Re:Remote surgery over 5G wireless? by Pseudonym · 2016-01-04 14:54 · Score: 1
  
  How many hospitals would waste money on a remote surgery robot rather than hiring more doctors or better doctors...
  You probably live in a decent-sized city with more than one very good hospital.
  Think instead of some very remote place, like Antarctica.
  
  --
  sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
4. Re:Remote surgery over 5G wireless? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-04 17:29 · Score: 0
  
  Think instead of some very remote place, like Antarctica.
  Then think "high latency".
5. Re:Remote surgery over 5G wireless? by RockDoctor · 2016-01-05 11:44 · Score: 1
  
  On my previous ship, the telemedicine equipment sat unused most of the time. But I was still glad it was there.
  
  --
  Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
6. Re:Remote surgery over 5G wireless? by ItsJustAPseudonym · 2016-01-08 10:35 · Score: 1
  
  "Ship"? As in "a water-going vessel"?
You're doing it wrong... by David_Hart · 2016-01-04 11:19 · Score: 2

Yes, remote surgery would be nice but obviously has limitations.
My thought is that automated surgery would be better...
Perhaps remote surgery is a necessary stepping stone needed for machine learning to get us to automated surgery.
1. Re:You're doing it wrong... by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-04 11:53 · Score: 0
  
  Remote surgery might come in handy on the battlefield. The military already provides extensive medical care but they usually don't have enough surgeons close to the conflict. Most of the worst cases are only stabilized and transported the medical facilities usually located hours away in another country. Remote surgery in a case like this could make a big difference. Any tools or services the military deems necessary usually makes obtaining funding easy.
2. Re:You're doing it wrong... by RockDoctor · 2016-01-05 11:48 · Score: 1
  
  How about we start with automated autopsy?
  After automated butchery - I gather that many armies are gearing up for that.
  Oh, hang on. Looking down thread, an AC says :
  
  by Anonymous Coward on 2016-01-05 4:08 (#51239739)
  Physics dictates you aren't getting 1ms latency outside of a very, VERY short distance.
  Shoot these snakeoil salesmen right now.
  The AC is right - for "short distance" under 300km (one way or round trip, depending whether you're talking about one-way or round-trip times). But I think he's found a group of people who are vigorously signing up to be test cases for tele-surgery. Far better than just shooting them.
  
  --
  Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Don't need 5G or software-defined by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-04 11:25 · Score: 0

Run if over IP. If that IP network is on a 5G network, that's fine too.
Either way, go back to a circuit-switched methodology. Packet-switching brings the curse of mediocrity.
We can't get Netflix packets delivered promptly... by zerofoo · 2016-01-04 11:31 · Score: 1

Would you trust ANY ISP to deliver your surgery packets?
I sure as hell would not.
Re: What is up with this Internet surgery fascinat by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2016-01-04 11:52 · Score: 1

Have you tried cutting it open and suturing it shut again? If not, I'll hang up to keep my metrics high enough to avoid getting reamed out by my supervisor in order to allow you to try that. If so, please bleed out on hold while I stall on escalating you to a tier 2 support rep, much less to engineering...
Re:What is up with this Internet surgery fascinati by AHuxley · 2016-01-04 11:58 · Score: 1

The idea is a nation has real optical connections between its large national teaching hospitals and a more remote hospital in a distant regional area.
Local staff can set the equipment up, prep the patient as needed but the expert team is in a main city.
Bandwidth, data sets, networking is then less of an issue as the connection is the optical link. For that a nation would have to invest in optical end to end. The issue with wireless is still the physics of real bandwidth, sharing, number of users, networking to ensure all wireless users get a fair share of the network.
What can wireless do? Reserve a fraction of very limited bandwidth and offer speed? Speed is good but that massive data flow also needs support.
Other traditional options are a hospital train, ship or fly in..

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Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Re:What is up with this Internet surgery fascinati by JoeMerchant · 2016-01-04 13:11 · Score: 1

I'd like to live in a world where anyone competent to be a surgeon is allowed to study and become one.
A big part of the cluster---- that is medical care in the U.S.A. starts with the A.M.A. and their restrictions on entry to medical school.
Re:What is up with this Internet surgery fascinati by JoeMerchant · 2016-01-04 13:14 · Score: 1

airplane tickets are cheaper than telerobotic equipment.
Um, no, they're actually not. Airplane tickets _today_ are selling you non-sustainable joyrides on non-renewable fossil fuel. Each trans-oceanic flight burns more fuel than the weight of the passengers and their baggage. Telerobotic equipment is reusable and operated by the transfer of information, not the transfer of bags of meat - information moves much much more cheaply than people do.
Re: What is up with this Internet surgery fascinat by JoeMerchant · 2016-01-04 13:17 · Score: 1

I applied for a job at a med device company, while I was in the lobby filling the application a call came over the PA "Tech support, line 2, patient on the table."
Kinda glad I moved further up the chain to design where I don't get those kind of calls.
Specific Problem by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-04 14:36 · Score: 0

High bandwidth, low latency connections are easiest in places where doctors are already available. Unless you can make that low latency network available in remote areas, this is solving an imaginary problem just so we can have doctors drive robots over the internet.
Joe Rogan by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-04 15:35 · Score: 0

King Shitlord
I so want this by Snotnose · 2016-01-04 15:39 · Score: 1

Not because there is any way in hell I'm going to let a surgeon 100 miles away get a knife anywhere near my Tender Bits (tm), but because the fallover effects mean I can play a Call of Duty game with sub 250ms lag.

Just think, good as I am now with CoD, how much better would I be with decent lag times?
whip 'em! whip 'em real good! by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-04 16:06 · Score: 0

Telemedicine is for people who would otherwise lack access to care.
like them damn niggers, you mean?
well pa said they ain't gots nothin' a good whippin' won't fix.
an whippin' 'em is lots cheaper than all yer new-fangled nancy-boy robot stuff, too.
damn sissie yankees and yer devo music.
Pure fucking hype. by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-04 16:08 · Score: 0

Physics dictates you aren't getting 1ms latency outside of a very, VERY short distance.
Shoot these snakeoil salesmen right now.
Doesn't matter by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-05 00:28 · Score: 0

Current tech works good enough. https://www.cmas.ca/research/applied
Re:What is up with this Internet surgery fascinati by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-05 04:18 · Score: 0

just think of the new tech support scam calls!
"Hello I am Larry from the Microsoft technical support medical center. we are calling because both you and your computer are infected
please open event viewer...do you see all those messages? it means you and your computer both have Ebola and are going to die if we do not immediately operate.
please open a remote desktop session and enter in your credit card to begin"
Re:What is up with this Internet surgery fascinati by KGIII · 2016-01-05 08:46 · Score: 1

Pfft... What can possibly go wrong with this? They've got thi ^%$(&))^[lost carrier]

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"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Re:What is up with this Internet surgery fascinati by RockDoctor · 2016-01-05 11:41 · Score: 1

They play bingo with IT workers? How do they stop the IT-things from moving around the card? Glue?

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Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Re: What is up with this Internet surgery fascinat by RockDoctor · 2016-01-05 11:42 · Score: 1

Whoa! Now that is a pressure environment!

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Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Nobody mentioned tele-porn by RockDoctor · 2016-01-05 11:54 · Score: 1

Long before tele-surgery becomes common enough to be accepted, the use of tele-sex will have driven this low-latency, haptic feedback systems. Unless you buy the vagina-dentata attachment for your fleshlight, or the woman on the other end uses the "come like Superman" attachment ("faster than a speeding bullet" : that'll be a rail gun ejaculator then. Messy!), then the worst that's going to happen is that you need to remove the batteries and vent the hydraulics.
And no one has said "tele-dldonics" yet. Shame, Slashdot!

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Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"