The full-day 2023 ACS Surgeons and Engineers: A Dialogue on Surgical Simulation meeting was held in-person on March 1 with notable success. The ACS Surgeons and Engineering Committee served as the Program Committee for this meeting, which attracted more than 88 registrants from the US and seven other countries. The meeting promoted the collaboration between surgeons, surgical educators, academic engineers, and the simulation industry to build better surgical simulators.
The keynote address, “Therapeutic Principles for Bridging the Surgeon / Engineer Culture Gap in MedTech,” was delivered by Pierre E. Dupont, PhD, Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard University, Massachusetts. Dr. Dupont spoke about his academic engineering lab's challenges when implementing research projects with transferable outcomes in a clinical setting. He also gave insights on navigating research projects through the commercialization process and how to foster collaboration between clinicians and engineers.
The Special Panel, “How to Build Better Simulators,” included three experts with significant experience in productive partnerships between surgeons and academic and industry engineers. The panel discussed their definition of an ideal simulator, realism, and metrics, barriers in building such simulators, and collaborative efforts in the future. This discussion will continue at the future Surgeons and Engineers meeting and explore how surgeons, surgical educators, and simulator engineers can collaborate to determine the essential aspects of surgical simulator design. The expert panelists were Gladys Fernandez, MD, director of simulation education for the Baystate Simulation Center and Goldberg Surgical Skills Laboratory; John P. Lenihan, Jr., MD, FACOG, clinical consultant to surgical science; and Thenkurussi Kesavadas, PhD, founding director of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s Health Care Engineering Systems Center (HCESC).
A total of 58 research abstracts were received in four categories: Research, Research in Progress, Challenges in Technology-Enhanced Surgical Education, and Promoting Technology and Collaboration. Nine highly scored abstracts were presented during two oral presentation sessions, and 27 outstanding abstracts were presented as poster presentations. Several oral and poster presentations were made by young investigators, including medical/surgical trainees and engineering students. The presented abstracts are now posted on the Surgeons and Engineers Meeting web page for the public.
David Hananel, BSEE, BACS, director of the Center for Research in Education and Simulation Technologies, and Victoria Roach, PhD, research assistant professor, Division of Healthcare Simulation Science, Department of Surgery, University of Washington, lead a workshop session, “Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA), An Important Step for Simulator Development—What, Why, and How.”
Mr. Hananel and Dr. Roach described the general concept and process of creating a CTA and its application in building surgical simulators. Meeting participants had an opportunity to work in small groups to apply the simplified CTA process to a backpacking task.
The next ACS Surgeons and Engineers Meeting is scheduled for March 13, 2024, in Chicago, IL.
For additional information, visit the meeting web page) or contact Gyusung I. Lee, Ph.D., Co-Program Chair of the Surgeons and Engineers Meeting, at glee@facs.org.
