A robotic surgeon in Islamabad has performed a gallbladder removal operation remotely from a healthcare conference venue, in what is being described as the first robotic cholecystectomy carried out through telesurgery in the capital, according to reports by the Associated Press of Pakistan (APP) and local media. The procedure was performed by Prof Dr Syed Tanseer Asghar, a robotic surgeon at Kulsum International Hospital and Registrar of Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto Medical University (SZABMU). He controlled the robotic surgical instruments from the International Conference on Future of Healthcare (FHCC 2026), held at the Gandhara Heritage and Culture Centre, while the patient was at Kulsum International Hospital.
A surgical team at the hospital provided on-site support during the operation. Sana Sharafat Ali, a consultant robotic and vascular surgeon, served as the patient-side surgeon, which means she was present with the patient to assist and to step in if needed, as is standard practice in telesurgery. The demonstration was shown to the conference audience as a practical example of how robotic technology and real-time connectivity can be used in healthcare. In robotic telesurgery, a surgeon sits at a console that is linked to a robot beside the patient, and the surgeon’s hand movements are transmitted over a network to control the instruments, so the quality and speed of the connection matter for safety.
The university said it has also secured approval to set up a Robotic Surgery and Artificial Intelligence Health Centre, which it describes as the first of its kind at the university. The centre is intended to support surgical education, research, innovation, and the use of AI-driven healthcare tools. The reports on the demonstration say that telesurgery could improve access to specialised surgical services in remote and underserved areas, but they stress that this depends on the availability of suitable infrastructure, clinical safeguards, and regulatory frameworks. Those conditions are significant because remote surgery needs a reliable, low-delay network, trained staff at both ends, and clear rules on responsibility if a procedure runs into trouble.
Telesurgery has been tried in Pakistan before in other forms. In December 2025, surgeons in Kuwait operated on a patient at Lyari General Hospital in Karachi from about 1,600 kilometres away, in what was reported as the country’s first international telerobotic surgery, and in February this year Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi performed a remote robotic kidney operation on a Pakistan-based patient. The Islamabad operation differs in that the surgeon and the patient were in the same city, with the surgeon operating from a conference venue, so it demonstrates the technology in a domestic setting and not across borders. The reports do not say how far the conference venue was from the hospital, what network was used, how long the operation took, or how the patient is recovering, so those details would need to come from the hospital or the university.
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