The march of technology in healthcare has always been erratic, with vast differences between leading and trailing edge adopters. Progress can be fitful, with day-to-day operations conflicting with desires to bring in more advanced methods. That is just as much the case with remote and robotic surgery as other fields, but there is also the promise that the technology can help overcome inequalities of care and outcome. It brings scope for extending scarce expertise by providing access to life-saving procedures at the point and time of need, which may be at an emergency some distance from a hospital. By this token, it will not always be possible to have access to a fiber network that would meet demands for low…