Networking Research Innovations for Telesurgery: A Systematic Review

Networking is a core enabler of telesurgery, which has used networking research innovations for various surgical sub-specialties and geographical regions. This paper systematically reviews how networking research innovations have explicitly been carried out to improve telesurgery performance and summarizes future lines of research and innovation. We used networking (or networks) and telesurgery (or remote surgery) as our inclusion criteria, excluding non-computer networks such as healthcare networks. Our initial screening on IEEE, PubMed, and Scopus for networking research innovations aimed at telesurgery yielded 17,854 studies. We extracted data from 15 papers after the title, abstract, and full-text screening of the identified studies. A review of the 15 studies shows innovations in networking protocols, integration with connectivity providers, distributed systems, and adaptive approaches to enhance telesurgery. These innovative approaches optimize telesurgery applications across medical domains in research and practice. Recently, research has also focused on how telesurgery networks can be made more flexible through approaches such as Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV). We also note the rise in networking research innovations in recent years compared to the past. Networking has undergone several innovations to enhance bandwidth while minimizing latency, latency variations (jitter), and data loss. Networking research innovations have been leveraged locally in many countries and between nations, facilitating specialist care in remote regions that lack healthcare access. We foresee that networking research innovations will continue to revolutionize telesurgery applications and reach in the future.