A history-making robotic telesurgery procedure recently came out of AdventHealth’s Global Robotics Institute (GRI) in Celebration.
On June 14, GRI founder and medical director Dr. Vipul Patel remotely operated on a patient almost 7,000 miles away in Angola, South Africa. This marked the longest distance robotic surgery performed to date. With Dr. Patel’s staff patient-side in Angola, coupled with his leading experience of over 19,000 robotic prostatectomies, the patient was in good hands.
“People have operated at a distance before. Telesurgery is becoming more and more common, but it’s never been done in this way at this distance,” Dr. Patel said. “Never from the United States to Africa, and never where it’s been approved by a legal agency like the FDA.”
June was a banner month for AdventHealth, accomplishing breakthrough innovations in the surgical field. Its Wesley Chapel location performed a robotic hysterectomy, the first of its kind in Florida. While not required for the procedure, the robotic unit brings the medical experience to a whole new level.
“The addition of the da Vinci Robot has been a game changer, as it has allowed for advanced instrumentation and visualization for the surgeon and the entire surgical team,” said Dr. Olufunke Aboise, the OBGYN AdventHealth Medical Group surgeon who co-performed the procedure.
The da Vinci robotic units are key components to the work AdventHealth is doing in the surgical field. Intuitive, a 30-year developer in the robotic surgery field, reports over 32,000 procedures in 2024 involving the da Vinci 5, its most advanced model.
Robotic surgery was introduced in the 1980s followed by rapid growth and innovation, The technology is utilized to address head and neck, bladder, prostate, and gynecological issues. Life-saving applications include robotic-assisted kidney donor surgeries.
Robots aid in the trend toward minimally invasive surgery. Surgeons value the precise technique and the elimination of natural tremors during procedures. Patients report shorter hospital stays, minimized pain, less risk of infection, and less recovery time.
“These benefits contribute to higher patient satisfaction and a quicker return to daily activities. Many patients also appreciate the cosmetic advantages and reduced need for postoperative pain medication,” said Abiose.
After his landmark procedure, Dr. Patel noted, “What we’ve done allows us to operate in times of pandemic, maybe in times of war. But it also allows us to operate in underserved areas, places where they were just never going to get this kind of care.”
Telesurgery can also be performed in emergency situations. Surgeons anticipate ambulances to be outfitted to deliver immediate remote life-saving robotic surgery to patients in the future. Abiose sees other trends that include more compact robotic units for efficient outpatient procedures, 3D mapping for patient-specific care, as well as the increase of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in surgical decision-making.
“AI excels at recognizing patterns and understanding complex variable interactions— precisely the kind of complexity found in surgery,” according to Brian Miller, PhD, Executive Vice President/Chief Digital Officer at Intuitive. “We are only beginning to see its potential to help quantify what good surgery looks like.”
AdventHealth continues to drive these advancements, expanding its facilities in the Central Florida area.
Opening in late 2025, the new AdventHealth Minneola campus will add surgical suites to the community. A 10-story Lake Nona hospital is set to open in 2026 along with an eight-story health care tower in Celebration in late 2027. The main AdventHealth Orlando campus plans to welcome patients to a new high-tech 14-story “smart hospital” in 2030. The facilities will attract and train surgeons with the goal of expanding much-needed surgical specialties to the growing population.
“So it should change the whole landscape of healthcare where everything gets better because we can, we can help people that in the past were just kind of stuck,” said Patel. “I think that’s what’s important.”
