Telesurgery

When interacting with patients remotely, especially during a surgical procedure, it is crucial to minimize any delay between the surgeon's visual perception and the corresponding actions required by the robotic surgeon. Even a slight delay in the video stream can have catastrophic consequences, for example if the surgeon cuts too deep without realizing. Therefore, it is essential for the surgeon to have real-time view to a live video stream with almost zero delay, enabling them to operate in real-time.

Another challenge is that many of these patients reside in remote areas where the only available internet connectivity is through cellular networks. However, relying on a single cellular network connection can be unreliable and may not offer sufficient bandwidth for video transmission in such critical procedures. This also includes transmitting audio, monitoring vital signs, and facilitating the return control signals necessary for robotic control.

The Zao technology from Soliton is designed to solve the issues of reliable connectivity for video and other control signals needed for telesurgery and telemedicine. It can bond together multiple cellular operators as a single highly reliable connection on a single mobile device. It optimizes video and other IP related control signals based on the available bandwidth, even if the cellular signal becomes low and unreliable. But most defining of this technology, is that the Zao X technology has a video latency of less than 100ms over multiple 4G connections. This is from camera to monitor and includes all encoding and decoding that is required of a video live stream.  With 5G this delay could be reduced even further.

As well as ultra-low latency and support for 5G, the Zao-X can support high resolution video such as 4K/UHD which can be considered a pre-requisite for surgical operations.