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First 5G Remote Surgery Completed In China (ubergizmo.com)
According to local reports, the world's first remote surgery equipment using 5G networks was successfully tested in China. "The test involved a doctor in the southeastern province of Fujian removing the liver of a laboratory test animal at a remote location," reports Ubergizmo. "The doctor performed the surgery by controlling robotic surgical arms over a 5G connection." From the report: The lag time was said to be only 0.1 seconds between the control device of the doctor and the robot in the surgical room. The researchers said that this high speed can reduce the risk of potentially deadly medical mistakes. They hope that 5G enabled remote surgery will soon become reliable enough that it can be used safely on humans as well. This could end up saving countless lives as skilled surgeons will be able to operate on patients in remote locations in a safe manner. The South China Morning Post published a video that shows the doctor performing the surgery.
I'm thinking that if you're a hospital/surgery center doing remote surgeries, you might want to go ahead and spring for a decent network connection for the hospitals at both ends. Just speculating out loud, of course. Not like anyone is paying for the surgery, or that it's not already going to take way more expensive equipment than a decent network connection to do it...
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Because publicity.
Large portions of the gadget tech industry are masturbating furiously in public over "5G" in the vain hopes that it'll be a thing that will pick smartphone sales and etc. back up. Of course this surgery could've just bee done with a wired connection over wifi. It's not like 100ms ping is great or anything. But any chance to splooge "5G" all over public faces will be taken.
SORRY! I MISSED MY POINT regarding the conspiracy theory...
Thereâ(TM)s been too much pump hype pump on 5g, which doesnâ(TM)t seem that urgently needed? Is there some kind of inherent black door on 5g networks? Better tracking of user location? Easier to decrypt? Thereâ(TM)s just too many articles on it at this point, where it feels they âwantâ(TM) to pump the product.
I just canâ(TM)t get excited for it in the slightest.
As far as I can tell the big difference between 4G and 5G is not usable bandwidth per device, but total aggregate bandwidth per cell. So your 5G phone probably won't download anything faster (or maybe it will, who knows) but the 5G network will support thousands to millions of high-bandwidth devices in each cell area. This makes all kinds of creepy shit possible. So far IoT has been limited by WiFi availability, and controllable at the WiFi router. With 5G there are potentially no such limits, particularly if the mobile electronics can be made cheaply enough. Every device, from appliances to cars to toys, can be phoning home at high bandwidth constantly, with no way to filter or monitor them.
You thought the Intel ME was a security nightmare? Wait until every CPU has an embedded 5G module!
This seems like a good time to stock up on tinfoil.
this surgery could've just bee done with a wired connection over wifi
Of course it could have. And as a proof of concept how would this help a situation where wifi / wired connection does not exist?
Wireless is not a technology looking for a problem to solve. The problems are well known and are driving continued improvements in wireless.
Here's the thing about "robotic surgery": it's actually really good for a few things, like stuff in the pelvis (prostates, complicated hysterectomies). Anywhere else in the abdomen, it doesn't offer much more than plain laparoscopy does, except cost. I work with surgeons who can have a gallbladder or appendix out laparoscopically before you could even get the robot docked to all the instruments, and it doesn't decrease the number or size of incisions.
Sure, in theory, you can do it remotely. Here's the catch: you still have to have someone on site who can put the trocars in (most surgeons will not let an assistant do this until they have worked with them extensively, as it is one of those things that you can royally fuck up if you don't know what you're doing) and close the incisions afterward. And that assumes that you actually can do the surgery laparoscopically/robotically, which is not a guaranteed thing. We end up performing open operations from time to time once we get in there and see what's going on. Bigger tumor than you thought? You're not going to be able to pull it out through a 12 mm camera port. Someone is going to have to make a bigger incision.
Oh, and I haven't even started the discussion about when things start going badly and you need to act quickly. So: if you have to have a fully-qualified surgeon on site anyway, along with these gigantic, expensive machines, why not just have them do the surgery, and skip the gigantic, expensive machine? It's a neat party trick to say you're doing it remotely, but in practice... it doesn't add much.
Only in China would anyone even dream of doing something this idiotic.
Animal testing before human testing?
Remote surgery which has been something that has been explored globally for 20+ years?
Using wireless for situations where wires aren't available?
Testing wireless before rolling it out?
Help me here, I'm struggling how conducting a technology PoC is so incredibly "idiotic".