What is the challenge

Despite rapid advances in health innovation, access to life-saving technologies remains deeply unequal, particularly in low- and middle-income countries and humanitarian settings. Innovations that improve outcomes in well-resourced systems fail to translate into public-sector impact where needs are greatest. Barriers include shortages of skilled health workers, fragile infrastructure, limited financing, and weak system integration.

These inequities are especially visible in surgical and specialist care. An estimated 5 billion people lack access to essential surgical services. While high-income countries may have 30–50 specialist providers per 100,000 people, many low- and middle-income countries have fewer than five – and in some contexts fewer than one.

At the same time, advances in virtual care, digitally enabled service delivery, and telesurgery offer new possibilities to extend expertise across distance and support local health workers. However, without strong evidence, regulatory clarity, and public-sector decision frameworks, such innovations risk being adopted unevenly — confined to high-end facilities or medical tourism markets — and may ultimately reinforce existing inequities.

Recognising this, WHO Member States have called for integrated, system-wide approaches to strengthen emergency, critical, and operative care as part of universal health coverage, and for the responsible use of digital transformation to deliver public value.

What is innovative about the project

The project recognises that innovation does not scale in isolation. Successful deployment of telesurgery depends not only on technological capability, but also on system readiness, governance, financing, and workforce capacity.

Its innovation lies in combining frontier technology exploration with system-level reform. The project analyses the full ecosystem required for equitable telesurgery deployment, including regulatory frameworks, digital infrastructure, financing models, workforce training, clinical guidelines, safety standards, and public-private collaboration.

Rather than focusing solely on technical feasibility, the project takes a systems approach to identify what must be in place for telesurgery to strengthen public health systems in humanitarian contexts.

What are the expected outcomes

The project will establish cross-sector task forces in two pilot countries, engaging governments, clinicians, entrepreneurs, and technology partners to address the practical and technical challenges of telesurgery in humanitarian settings. These include connectivity, signal latency, uninterrupted power supply, regulatory approval, and patient safety protocols.

The project will also conduct research and generate evidence to identify and develop mechanisms to enhance the affordability and investment case for telesurgery solutions to be deployed in humanitarian settings (incl. innovative finance models, potential business cases).

The expected outcome is to strengthen the evidence-based system readiness for the equitable deployment of telesurgery in humanitarian settings, enabling governments to make informed decisions around technology deployment for better public health outcomes.

Who are the project partners

The project is led by World Health Organization, in partnership with the Society of Robotic Surgery and IRCAD.

These two organizations play catalytic roles through robotic telesurgery clinical expertise and technology centers of excellence with regards to the equitable use of robotic telesurgery for addressing humanitarian needs.