The new robotic telesurgery program at Rome's Agostino Gemelli University Hospital has launched. The first two experimental surgeries were carried out at the hospital and Isola Tiberina Hospital on a woman and a man with colon cancer and prostate cancer, respectively. Professor Sergio Alfieri and Professor Bernardo Rocco performed the procedures from the robotic platform console at Isola Tiberina Hospital (in central Rome); the patients were in the operating rooms at Gemelli University Hospital (the main facility, more than 10 kilometers away), where the other members of the surgical team were present. These were the first robotic telesurgery procedures carried out in Italy by Italian surgeons on Italian patients. This project's initial phase will have twenty procedures. Gemelli’s telesurgery programme also looks beyond Italy, with a focus on Africa, where the Roman hospital runs training, research, cooperation and local healthcare-system strengthening programmes. The capacity to connect medical teams thousands of kilometers away will, over time, help to transmit knowledge, train specialists, and make complex surgical operations available even in the most deprived areas.