Professor Tao Lei's team from the Department of Head and Neck Surgery at the Affiliated Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat Hospital of Fudan University completed the world's first remote transoral glottic tumor robotic surgery using a domestically produced artificial intelligence transoral non-invasive surgical robot, marking a major breakthrough in China's medical artificial intelligence field.
Professor Tao Lei's team controlled the transoral surgical robot system developed by Chengdu Borns Medical Robot Co. , Ltd. and performed a precise laryngeal glottic tumor resection on a 52-year-old patient from Kashgar Kashgar County, Xinjiang Autonomous Region, at the Kashgar Second People's Hospital (hereinafter referred to as "Kashgar Second Hospital") across 5,000 kilometers in 50 minutes, successfully completing the world's first AI + intelligent robot remote head and neck surgery non-invasive surgery.

▲ Source: Kashgar Second Hospital
Tao Lei said that the amount of blood loss during the operation was less than 1 ml. "The whole process of the operation was very smooth. As the surgeon, through the human-machine collaboration with the surgical robot, it felt like I was doing the operation locally, without any sense of distance or delay." Tao Lei, who had just completed the operation, shared his experience of remote surgery for the first time. "The difficulty of the operation is that it must be accurate while avoiding the key structures of the organs with sensitivity and precision. The robot has completed the actual combat test with high quality."
This ultra-remote surgery successfully used artificial intelligence large model technology, implemented submillimeter instrument control, broke through space and network limitations, and created a new exploration of the deep integration of artificial intelligence and surgical medicine.
Borns said that after 8 years of research and development, the "Chengdu-made" AI + surgical robot, which has 1,760 parts and more than 300 independent intellectual property rights, has filled the gap that global surgical robots cannot perform laryngeal glottic area surgery.
Li Yao, founder of Borns Medical Robotics Co., Ltd. and scientist at the Robotics Center of the Stanford University Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, said that the Borns surgical robot successfully completed the world's first glottic tumor resection in October last year. "Four months later, we extended the other end of the operating room to Kashgar, 5,000 kilometers away. The doctor is in Shanghai and the patient is in Kashgar, successfully breaking the industry gap in ultra-long-distance surgery in the glottic area."
Li Yao said that this robot involves 165 companies and 1,760 parts upstream and downstream, and is made in China with completely independent intellectual property rights. Through embodied intelligent algorithms and sub-millimeter instrument control, Borns AI + surgical robots break through the limitations of space and network, and complete key technologies such as tracking and positioning, 3D reconstruction, and force feedback operation in real time, realizing the in-depth integration of artificial intelligence and surgical medicine.
Kashi Second Hospital said that in order to ensure the successful implementation of this remote surgery, the Affiliated Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat Hospital of Fudan University sent a team consisting of Xu Chengzhi, director of the Robotic Minimally Invasive Surgery Center, anesthesiologist Li Weixing, and specialist nursing experts Wei Yao and Chen Jiachong to Kashi for surgical guidance. China Telecom Kashi Company laid a broadband dedicated line for the surgery and sent engineers to conduct signal docking tests many times, creating an ultra-high-speed, low-latency, and high-reliability communication environment for the two hospitals, ensuring the real-time transmission of surgical instructions and high-definition images, with errors controlled at the millisecond level, providing key guarantees for the precise operation of the robot. The artificial intelligence oral surgery robot technical team also transported the robotic surgical arm from Chengdu to Kashi in advance and completed assembly and debugging.
Tao Lei said that the artificial intelligence oral surgery robot can not only perform real-time tracking and positioning, and three-dimensional reconstruction through multimodal digital twin technology (IT Home Note: mainly video , voice and force feedback), but also achieve precise control through force feedback operations.
It is said that by using AI big model technology, Borns AI + surgical robot has broken through the delay control bottleneck in low-bandwidth environment, and achieved the support of remote precision surgery through ordinary network of multimodal digital twin technology. "In other words, even without the support of 5G high bandwidth and low latency, ultra-remote precision surgery can be achieved."