Across the Philippine archipelago, access to advanced surgical care remains heavily concentrated in major metropolitan centers. For millions of patients outside major urban hubs, particularly in Mindanao, receiving specialized surgical intervention often requires long-distance travel, substantial travel expenses, and extended time away from families. In time-sensitive conditions, geographical distance can directly impact patient outcomes.
In a landmark demonstration of how enterprise infrastructure can overcome these regional healthcare disparities, Globe Business provided the dedicated, mission-critical network that enabled the country’s first ever successful inter-regional telesurgery across a distance of more than 1,400 kilometers. The procedure was a concurrent, bi-directional remote surgery between Jose B. Lingad Memorial General Hospital (JBLMGH) in San Fernando, Pampanga, and Cotabato Regional and Medical Center (CRMC) in Cotabato City. While surgeons at JBLMGH remotely operated on a patient at CRMC, the surgical team in Cotabato simultaneously performed a remote robotic procedure on a patient in Pampanga, establishing decentralized care models designed to democratize surgical excellence across regional boundaries.
“Digital infrastructure is moving beyond basic operational support to become an active foundation for essential public services,” said Glenn Estrella, Globe Business Vice President. “Connecting surgical teams across Luzon and Mindanao in real time demonstrates how network reliability directly expands the reach of specialized medicine. Our role is to provide a stable digital foundation that allows public hospitals and specialists to serve patients regardless of geography.”
The clinical initiative was spearheaded by medical technology distributor RBGM Medical Express Sales Inc. (RBGM) in collaboration with surgical robotics developer SS Innovations, JBLMGH, and CRMC. Beyond introducing the technology, RBGM plays a critical long-term role by ensuring comprehensive local training, technical support, and the scaling of decentralized surgical units across regional healthcare facilities. The bi-directional procedures utilized the advanced SSi Mantra 3.0 Surgical Robotic System, featuring modular multi-arm patient-side carts that translated each surgeon’s hand movements into micro-movements executed at the opposing operating tables.
To keep the robotic tools responding smoothly, Globe Business set up a private, direct data connection between the two hospitals. Because this link ran separately from standard public internet traffic and congestion, both surgical teams did not have to compete with everyday web congestion. The connection achieved a response time as low as 0.76 milliseconds, letting the surgeon utilise 3D 4K video and clearly hear operating room audio, ensuring immediate tactile feedback for intricate surgical tasks, and guide the instruments without any noticeable delay. Backup network routes were also kept active to ensure the signal stayed steady from start to finish.
“When performing surgical procedures remotely, network performance translates directly into patient safety and surgical precision,” said Estrella. “By maintaining near-instantaneous response times and redundant routing across islands, enterprise connectivity gives medical teams the confidence to collaborate across regions. This capability allows regional medical centers to retain patients locally while drawing on specialized surgical expertise from across the country.”
The milestone supports the Department of Health’s National Objectives for Health, which prioritizes digital health systems to improve efficiency and regional access across the public hospital network. While 63 of 70 DOH-retained hospitals currently use digital telemedicine for consultations, the successful JBLMGH-CRMC procedure demonstrates the viability of extending higher-tier clinical procedures and robotic surgeries to regional facilities.
As healthcare facilities adopt mission-critical technologies like robotics and telemedicine, network reliability and ultra-low latency become essential to patient outcomes. Healthcare institutions seeking to build dedicated connectivity infrastructure can learn more by visiting https://www.globe.com.ph/business.
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