UIC and UI Health: Reshaping the future of telesurgery

Researchers at UIC and UI Health are challenging accepted beliefs about telesurgery with the help of $9 million in funding from the Office of Naval Research.

The researchers believe telesurgery — a surgeon operating on a patient in a different physical location using robotic systems, high-speed data connections and real-time telecommunications — will not only improve care for combat soldiers, but also improve health outcomes in rural communities.

Dr. Stephen Bartlett, principal investigator of the project and a UI Health transplant surgeon, said beliefs about “maximum latency” — the time between the surgeon’s hand movement and the robot’s corresponding action on a patient — have never been rigorously tested. A more precise determination of what time lag is acceptable could advance telesurgery, as concerns about latency have slowed its development.

“There are many speculative pronouncements in the surgical literature that the maximum tolerable latency is 150 milliseconds. But when you start to read the literature, it’s just conjecture,” he said. “Nobody had done any real experiments to say what latency is tolerable.”

Over the past year, in partnership with the Uniformed Services University for Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland, Bartlett and his team found that surgeons could skillfully perform surgery even when the latency was extended to 378 milliseconds, about a third of a second.

“The robot itself has a latency of 50 milliseconds, and the round-trip time between Bethesda and Chicago by fiber-optic cable is 28 milliseconds. We added 300 milliseconds of electronic delay to simulate satellite communication,” Bartlett said. “Even with the additional 300 milliseconds of added latency, the surgeons were able to safely perform the surgeries.”

The complete manuscript of this study and its presentation at the American Surgical Association’s 146th Annual Meeting, April 23-25, 2026, in Seattle, Washington, is anticipated to be published in the Annals of Surgery pending editorial review.

“We want to prepare to manage combat casualties in the South China Sea, and the only way to do that is through a satellite-based connection,” Bartlett said. “I wanted to do experiments to figure out how much latency we can add and still get the work done with the same level of surgical safety as if the surgeon were in the same room as the patient.”

Telesurgery has grown in use and effectiveness since its introduction in 2000. By 2023, over 15% of all surgical procedures in the US were performed with robotic assistance. Patients typically still have a full medical team (nurses and assistant surgeons) present in the operating room for support, even if the primary surgeon is in another location.

Bartlett said telesurgery is poised to transform medicine.

UIC and UI Health have spent the past two decades establishing themselves as leaders in telesurgery. They’ve pioneered techniques and procedures and work with the top robotics companies like Intuitive Surgical and Medtronic to educate the world’s surgeons on robotic surgery.

UI Health’s robotic surgery program, led by Dr. Pier Cristoforo Giulianotti and Dr. Enrico Benedetti, performed more than 1,600 surgeries in 2025 using a fleet of seven robots. The number of robots at UI Health is now nine.

Bartlett approached the U.S. Navy when he joined UIC in 2023 to explore telerobotic surgery. With support from Sen. Dick Durbin, Bartlett secured congressional appropriations to fund the research.

“We can do the surgery from Walter Reed using a robotic system and satellite support, and that person never leaves the ship they are stationed on,” said Bartlett. “Not only do they get the surgery they need, but because it’s done robotically and is less invasive, their recovery is shortened. So we get them back on duty in a few days rather than a few weeks or months.”

The university partnered with Sovato, a remote robotics surgery and procedure platform, to conduct experiments on cadavers.

The research has implications for rural medicine, too. It can address the shortage of general surgeons in rural areas, reduce costs and reduce the need for patients to travel long distances.

“The work with the Navy is a means to an end, because the big opportunity in telerobotics is in rural medicine. There’s a shortage in rural communities, and that was exacerbated during the COVID pandemic,” Bartlett said. “So telerobotics is a solution to the rural health care problem.”

Benedetti, a transplant surgeon at UI Health and Interim G. Stephen Irwin Executive Dean of the University of Illinois College of Medicine, said people living in rural areas have poorer health outcomes and higher mortality rates than their urban counterparts.

“In some states, more than 50% of the population is rural,” he said.

From 2001 to 2019, the number of surgeons in rural areas fell by 29%. Roughly 60% of non-metropolitan counties lacked an active general surgeon in 2019.

Bartlett and Benedetti are exploring opportunities to use telesurgery in rural health care. One such opportunity would connect UIC to five rural hospitals in Illinois.

“The goal would be to use telerobotics to solve the surgeon shortage issue in the United States,” Bartlett said.