Photo credit: University of Cincinnati. Dr. Timothy Broderick and his team perform a robotic telesurgery simulation at Simi Valley, California.

Some day, surgeons may routinely operate on patients who aren't there. The patient may be somewhere inaccessible, like a battlefield or a space station, or in a hospital without the right kind of specialized surgical team. Robotic-assisted surgery is already commonplace -- tens of thousands of procedures have already been performed using equipment made by Intuitive Surgical -- but the surgeon is usually seated a few feet away from the patient. Remote telesurgery requires not only robotic surgical equipment but a reliable network.

Last year, surgeons in Ohio and Colorado successfully operated on six pigs in California, using equipment from Intuitive Surgical and the public Internet. Some of the same surgeons are now working with the U.S. Army to test telesurgery using an unmanned aerial vehicle, or drone, as a communications device. This high-altitude platform creates a low-latency (close to real-time) network, which makes it easier for surgeons to operate at a distance.