First US hospital-to-hospital telesurgery: AdventHealth removes prostate 35 miles away
A surgeon at AdventHealth Celebration near Orlando removed the prostate of a 66-year-old cancer patient lying in an operating room at AdventHealth Minneola, about 35 miles away, on Sunday Oct 26, ABC News reported, citing an AdventHealth statement; the Guardian and the New York Post carried the same account.
It is described as the first such telesurgery between two US hospitals and was done inside an FDA-authorised clinical study, with a qualified surgeon at the bedside. The robot system and network latency were not disclosed in the reports.
MEKAWIRE has tracked two other clinical or cross-border telesurgery milestones this month, in Japan and Korea.
A surgeon in Celebration, Florida, removed a cancer patient's prostate on Sunday, Oct 26, while the patient lay in an operating room 35 miles away, ABC News reported, citing a statement from AdventHealth. The Guardian and the New York Post reported the same account a day later. The hospital system describes it as the first telesurgery of its kind between two US hospitals. AdventHealth's own release could not be opened by MEKAWIRE (the site blocked automated access), so the details below are as reported.
Dr. Vipul Patel, founder and medical director of the Global Robotics Institute at AdventHealth Celebration, controlled the instruments from Celebration; the 66-year-old patient was at AdventHealth Minneola, with a qualified surgeon in the room. The operation was part of a clinical research study authorised by the US Food and Drug Administration, and the hospital said the patient is doing well. Patel said in the statement that questions about safety, effectiveness and technical performance remain under investigation. Patel's team had already carried out about a dozen telesurgeries between Orlando and Luanda, Angola, more than 7,000 miles apart, according to ABC News.
What the reports leave out
None of the reports names the robot system or its maker, the network used, or the latency between console and robot. Those are the numbers that decide whether telesurgery can scale: a 35-mile link inside one hospital network is a far easier test than a public-internet connection across a state.
- Oct 15
- Hirosaki University (Japan)
- Between two hospitals
- Medicaroid hinotori, NTT East line
- 5 clinical cases since August
- Oct 19
- Korea University Anam Hospital
- Seoul to Shanghai, about 870 km
- MicroPort MedBot Toumai
- Animal model
- Oct 26
- AdventHealth (US)
- About 35 miles (56 km)
- Not disclosed
- 1 reported human case in a US study
From MEKAWIRE's earlier stories (primary releases) and, for AdventHealth, ABC News citing the hospital.
As of Oct 28, 2026
Why it matters
MEKAWIRE context: this is the third remote-surgery milestone we have logged this month. Hirosaki University reported Japan's first five clinical cases on Medicaroid's hinotori over an NTT East line on Oct 15, and Korea University Anam Hospital operated a MicroPort Toumai robot in Shanghai from Seoul, on an animal model, on Oct 16. The US case matters because it runs under an FDA study, which is the route by which a telesurgery indication could eventually reach a cleared device label. Market context is in our surgical robots explainer. What to watch: the study's registration, its enrolment target, and which manufacturer's system it uses.
- Sunday, Oct 26, 2026
- Dr. Vipul Patel, Global Robotics Institute, AdventHealth Celebration (Florida)
- Prostatectomy, 66-year-old man with prostate cancer
- About a dozen Orlando to Luanda (Angola) telesurgeries, over 7,000 miles
- AdventHealth Minneola, about 35 miles away
- Robot system, network, latency
- FDA-authorised clinical research study