Ericsson to demonstrate remote surgery at 5G World event

Swedish networks giant Ericsson will partner with King’s College London to demonstrate 5G tactile robotic surgery at the 5G World 2016 event opening tomorrow.

Ericsson and King’s announced their 5G collaboration just after this year’s Mobile World Congress. It’s designed to bring industry and academia together to explore clever ways of using all the new wireless capabilities 5G is expected to provide.

Among the anticipated 5G improvements is latency – i.e. the delay between sending a signal and receiving it. For things like virtual reality and long-distance remote control low latency is considered vital, as any delay can completely undermine the process. For things like remote surgery this is especially important, not just for the obviously high stakes in play, but to enable things like haptic feedback to mimic a sense of touch.

The “Remote Control and Intervention” 5G medical use case will show a probe as a robotic representation of a biological finger that gives the surgeon the sense of touch in minimally invasive surgery, and is able to send accurate real time localization of hard nodules in soft tissue. The probe, or robotic finger, is able to identify cancer tissue and send information back to the surgeon as haptic feedback.

“Through this 5G simulation demonstration we can show how latency is a critical part of what 5G can deliver, bringing both the sense of touch and an essential real-time video feed to remote surgery,” Valter D’Avino, Head of Ericsson Western & Central Europe.

“By 5G enabling enhanced minimally invasive remote surgery, the number of applications escalates and the advantages are no longer geographically localized. It enables worldwide mentorship and scalability of diagnosis and intervention,” Professor Mischa Dohler, Head of the Centre for Telecommunications Research in the Department of Informatics at King’s College London.

Telecoms.com will be at the 5G World event conducting TV interviews with keynote speakers and roaming the show floor, so be sure to say hello if you see us.