AIBRIEF
On Sept. 5, surgeons at Jose B.
Two regional government hospitals in the Philippines, about 1,380 kilometers apart, completed the Philippines' first inter-regional robotic telesurgeries on Sept. 5, with both patients paying nothing under the Department of Health's Zero Balance Billing policy, which covers the full cost of care for eligible patients.
In the first case, Dr. Ryan Quiambao at Jose B. Lingad Memorial General Hospital (JBLMGH) in San Fernando, Pampanga, operated on a patient at Cotabato Regional and Medical Center (CRMC) in Cotabato City. Hours later, Dr. Al-Jazzer M. Angas and Dr. Louis Gerard Agustin at CRMC performed the same procedure on a patient in Pampanga. Both operations were robotic cholecystectomies, or gallbladder removals, carried out on the SSI Mantra system built by India's SS Innovations. Philstar Life places the first surgery at 8 a.m. Saturday and the second at 1 p.m.
Both procedures finished in under an hour with minimal blood loss, the CRMC-JBLMGH joint statement reported, which frames the result as a path to specialty reach in remote areas. DOH Secretary Dr. Edwin M. Mercado and Pampanga Gov. Lilia "Nanay" Pineda witnessed the cases in person. Local distributor RBGM Medical Express Sales handled network and technical support, per Politiko Mindanao.
No long-term patient outcomes or independent network-latency figures have been published, so it is not yet clear whether the Luzon-Mindanao link can become routine specialty care or remains a one-off demonstration.