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Intuitive Surgical is pursuing the concepts of “telementoring” or “teleproctoring” rather than telesurgery.

True telesurgery, Roger Smith suggests, also begs a further question, one which we may yet hear in the coming decade or so.

The other holy grail of telesurgery – the possibility of remote “battlefield” operations – is closer to being a reality.

He envisages three possible champions of telesurgery: the military, “If you could, say, create a connection where the surgeon could be in Italy and the patient in Iraq”; medical missionaries, “Where surgeons in the developed world worked through robots in places without advanced surgeons”; and Nasa, “At a point where you have enough people in space that you need to set up a way to do surgery.”

Soon, we shall see the advent of telesurgery for routine procedures using robots and nurse assistants.