Reimagining Surgery for Rural Needs: Robotics Teleoperation (2025-2026)
In North Carolina, 92% of counties have a shortage of healthcare professionals. This affects over two million residents, a number that is projected to increase over time, exacerbating disparities in healthcare access. Many patients in rural regions have difficulty accessing modern surgical techniques that require specially trained clinicians.
Recent decades have seen the development of low-cost, multi-purpose, non-conventional surgical tools to improve outcomes and minimize hospitalization time. However, deployment of these tools in clinics requires skilled operators, which can be difficult to find in rural counties. A robotic laser surgery platform with teleoperation capability (remote control by a human operator from a distance) that can be operated by clinicians across surgical specialties would be helpful in performing a variety of surgical procedures in rural areas where highly specialized surgeons are not available.
Team members engaged in several connected activities to investigate the feasibility of deploying a robotic laser surgery platform, including:
- Clinician engagement: Team members consulted with clinicians across surgical specialties to better understand where robot-guided surgery could be useful, what barriers currently limit adoption and what features would make a system more practical in clinical settings.
- Survey development: The team designed and distributed an IRB-approved clinician survey to gather structured feedback on surgical needs, desired robotic capabilities, interface preferences and safety concerns.
- User-interface design and iteration: Team members tested and refined interface concepts for teleoperated robotic surgery, including camera views, laser controls, tool-position feedback and safety alerts.
- Platform development: The engineering team designed the Robot-Assisted Tissue Surgery platform that integrates robotic motion, laser control, imaging, live camera feedback, sense-of-touch input and a surgeon-facing user console.
- Science communication and outreach: The team created educational content, including a YouTube video, to explain the motivation for robotic laser surgery and to engage audiences unfamiliar with laser-based surgical tools.
These activities allowed the team to combine clinical needs assessment, technical prototyping and public-facing communication to advance the goal of making robotic surgical systems more intuitive, accessible and clinically grounded.
Timing
Summer 2025 – Spring 2026
Team Outputs
- Open-source Robot-Assisted Tissue Surgery platform
- IRB-approved survey and live dashboard summarizing clinician preferences for robot-guided survey
- Design and Development of a Teleoperation Framework for a Robotic Laser Surgery Platform (International Symposium on Medical Robotics; Knoxville, TN, USA, April 22, 2026).
- Design and Development of a Teleoperation Framework for a Robotic Laser Surgery Platform (IEEE-RAS RoboSoft; Kanazawa, Japan; April 15, 2026)
- Design and Development of a Teleoperation Framework for a Robotic Laser Surgery Platform (IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation; Vienna, Austria, June 1-5, 2026)
- Reimagining Surgery for Rural Needs: Robotics Teleoperation (Poster presentation at the Fortin Foundation Bass Connections Showcase, April 15, 2026)
This Team in the News
How Can Robotic Surgery Improve Access To Specialized Healthcare in Rural Communities?