AdventHealth Pulls Off the First Telesurgery Between Two U.S. Hospitals
A surgeon in Celebration, Florida, removed a cancerous prostate from a patient lying in an operating room 35 miles away.
The operation took place on Oct. 25, 2026, and it is the first documented robotic telesurgery between two hospitals in the United States.
The patient, a 66-year-old man with prostate cancer, is doing well.
One Console, Two Hospitals
Dr. Vipul Patel operated from AdventHealth Celebration, and he has performed more than 21,000 robotic prostatectomies.
He controlled the investigational Toumai surgical system from MicroPort MedBot, which was positioned in the operating room at AdventHealth Minneola.
Dr. Marcio Moschovas stayed at the patient’s bedside with a full surgical team.
His job was to support the case onsite and to take over if anything went wrong.
Backup systems and contingency plans were also in place at the patient’s location.
From Angola to Central Florida
The study first linked Orlando with Luanda, Angola, across roughly 7,000 miles in 10 investigational procedures.
The Florida case brings the same idea into an ordinary American hospital setting.
That shift tests whether remote surgery can fit into real hospital workflows, with real networks, real alarms, and real staffing.
What the Researchers Are Watching
The team is tracking surgical outcomes, safety, and effectiveness.
It is also measuring network performance, cybersecurity, alarms, and how the system behaves under contingency conditions.
Those last items matter because telesurgery adds risks that standard robotic surgery does not have, such as a lost connection or a cyberattack.
If either one strikes mid-operation, the bedside surgeon has to be ready to take the controls.
One Case, Big Promise
AdventHealth is clear that this is one case in an ongoing investigation, and a single success does not prove the system is safe or effective.
The study's goal is still exciting.
Access to highly specialized care often depends on where a patient lives, and telesurgery is being tested as a way to loosen that link.
If the evidence holds up, a surgeon’s skill could one day travel farther than the surgeon does.
The 2026 Surgical Technology Intelligence Report maps the full landscape of telesurgery platforms and the evidence behind them.
