Surgeons use PlayStation controller to perform endoscopy 6,000 miles away – good job the PlayStation Network was still up at that point
We jest of course, while Sony’s recent unscheduled downtime may have prevented you from getting a few wins with your ultimate team, some people have real jobs to be getting on with. Surgeons in Switzerland have performed an endoscopy on a pig in Hong Kong (man, how good is that pig’s health insurance, I can’t even get a doctor’s appointment anymore?). The reason we are talking about it? The surgeons used a PlayStation controller.
While we have no idea what L1 and L2 were used for on this occasion Fox News tells us that the system utilized a robotic system and a magnetic endoscope and the Swiss surgeon worked from a console in Zurich. Said pig was then shown being operated on with a combination of a PlayStation 3 Move controller (I have just popped mine on eBay in case any Big Pharma bros want to snap it up.) and a PlayStation 5 controller. We had hoped it was a dance mat but it seems the technology for that isn’t ready yet.
Rumors that this is a PlayStation exclusive and will definitely not be appearing on Xbox and Nintendo Switch are yet to be confirmed.
Being serious for a moment this is a remarkable leap in health technology and could lead to operations being performed in remote locations where the necessary world-class expertise might not necessarily be available. Fox News also reports that the technology could be used to perform operations in space in space in the future. How do fancy having your appendix whipped out at a Moon Base?
As any retrogamer worth their salt knows, latency can be a royal pain, and as you can probably imagine you do not need your remote surgeon suffering lag and packet loss while he has his robot-controlled tube up your… anyway you get the drift
The pig was unavailable for comment.
Featured image courtesy: Chinese University of Hong Kong / Kurt Knutsson
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