Operating from Afar: Xinhua Hospital Urology Performs Cross-Campus Remote Robotic Surgery

On the afternoon of January 6, 2026, Professor Cui Xingang of Xinhua Hospital's Department of Urology, working at the Fengxian campus, remotely controlled a surgical robot located at the Yangpu campus over a 5G network and successfully performed robot-assisted laparoscopic radical prostatectomy for 64-year-old prostate cancer patient Mr. Pan — a procedure carried out without any physical contact. The operation took about one hour, with network latency stable at 8–30 milliseconds and zero packet loss, so the surgeon experienced virtually no delay or lag.

The hospital established a dual-path redundant 5G private network with real-time synchronization, allowing seamless automatic switchover if one path failed, while senior surgeons such as Professor Gu Zhengqin stood by at the Yangpu campus ready to take over at any moment. The model removes the need for specialists to travel between campuses, gives patients in Fengxian convenient access to Yangpu experts, promotes homogeneous development across the hospital's multiple campuses, and has brought remote robotic surgery into routine clinical use.