A neurosurgeon in the United States operated on a patient in Dundee, Scotland, in 2025 in the first-ever remote thrombectomy — and researchers now argue that 6G could extend such robotic stroke surgery to far greater distances, provided the network can deliver.

Speaking at the One6G Summit in London, Thomas Booth, Professor of Neuroradiology at King's College London, outlined how sixth-generation networks could increase the use of robotics in hospitals for complex procedures and enable remote surgery over longer ranges.

His framing was measured. "6G is five plus one G – 5G with slightly better performance," he said — a remark that captured the cautious tone running through much of the conference's healthcare discussion.

Booth works on several medical robotics projects. One concrete use case he cited for 6G in a hospital setting is mechanical thrombectomy, the removal of blood clots after a stroke. Robots already increasingly perform these operations, he noted, and the 2025 transatlantic procedure in Dundee demonstrated that remote operation is technically feasible today.

The latency problem

Booth used his presentation to show exactly where the current technology fails. He demonstrated a live surgical feed on a higher-latency connection, displaying the "artifacting" and visual distortion that can make delicate surgery close to impossible.

"You can see the latency, the lag," Booth said. "We are interested in simulating this 'telecommunications gap,' and you can see that there is little focus in the area the surgeon is looking at."

He added: "You can imagine how immersive this experience would be [with 6G] and how transformative."

Vahid Tarokh, a professor at Duke University in the US, went further on the vision. "It will be the promise of 6G that will allow ultra-reliable, low-latency communication for robotics-assisted remote surgery," he said.

"If that happens, 6G will transform hospitals into intelligent autonomous spaces where every asset, device and patient monitor communicates, and the geographic barrier would be more or less gone," he added.

That is a marketing-adjacent claim, and Tarokh's speech did not address how 6G would actually work or be rolled out inside hospitals. A significant barrier could be the cost of fitting hospital buildings with new equipment, as indoor penetration is expected to be a challenge for the technology.

The fibre counterpoint

Tarokh himself raised the strongest objection to the 6G case. Wherever robotic surgery takes place, he asked, "why could you not create a fibre backbone for the room?"

He compared the situation to a dermatologist working remotely, who needs a strong connection and high-resolution images. "With 6G, latency is an issue," he said, and fibre-optic cabling would be the best way of avoiding it.

His skepticism found an echo elsewhere at the event. Lorenzo Masia, executive director of the Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence, said "current protocols" were "not robust enough" in the context of 6G and AI use.

Wearables and sensing

Away from the operating theatre, sensing could be a major 6G use case in healthcare, as the use of wearable devices — from pendants to rings — has risen in recent years.

Ahmad Bahai, senior vice president and CTO of Texas Instruments, was blunt about the network side of that equation.

"6G, from everything I have seen, I am sorry to say, is five plus one G," he said. "It is 5G with slightly better performance. The next thing would be a collective, different protocol of communication where we can really talk with each other seamlessly without being slowed down by standardisation."

Bahai argued that the best solution available now for connectivity between phones and wearables remains Bluetooth. He sees AI working with wearables to catch the warning signs of medical problems before they escalate.

"I am not saying by any means that doctors are going to be replaced with AI," he said. "I am saying with a lot of confidence that doctors who use AI are going to replace doctors who do not; it is going to change the whole picture."

For 6G in healthcare, the summit's takeaway was conditional: the clinical demand is real and growing with robotic surgery, but whether the business case for hospital-grade indoor 6G coverage survives comparison with a fibre backbone is a question operators and vendors will need to answer as standardisation proceeds.