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These resources have been reviewed and selected by STEM Learning’s team of education specialists for factual accuracy and relevance to teaching STEM subjects in UK schools.

What Is Remote Surgery?

This activity, from the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), provides an opportunity to assess students understanding of remote surgery.

It is intended that students will:
• Understand what remote surgery is
• Model how remote surgery works by using principles of electromagnetism to build a robotic arm

Telemedicine is a new and fast developing field in healthcare. Even 20 years ago the idea of a surgeon being able to operate a robot from hundreds of miles away in order to perform an operation seemed like science fiction. Today, this is not only possible but engineers, working with scientists and doctors, are now designing robotic systems which will be able to operate on patients with no human intervention at all.

This activity is a quick, engaging introduction to a lesson using telemedicine and robotics as a context to explore electromagnetism and the link between technology and real-life science.

Related activities can be found in the Remote Operations sub-collection.

This activity is supported by the video Robotic Surgery and the video Remote Medicine.

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