Updated: Aug 24
By leveraging AI capabilities, surgical processes can be streamlined, intraoperative decision-making can be supported, and the collective knowledge of surgeons worldwide can be harnessed to advance the practice of surgery.
The concept of making the globally dispersed surgical knowledge and expertise accessible to every patient through AI is called “Collective Surgical Consciousness” (or, as I would prefer to call it, “collective surgical intelligence”).
Make the global surgical expertise available in every operating room, all over the world, all the time.
Translating this into global patient benefit requires infrastructural changes in the way we use data and new technologies.
The next steps in the collective surgical intelligence might be:
More data from the operating room from all over the world
Infrastructures to share all that data
Distribute insights from that data
One of the key challenges of collective surgical intelligence is the lack of efficient quantities of high-quality data all over the world.
Updated: Aug 24
The 4 applications of artificial intelligence in surgical education and training are:
1. Video analysis
Surgical videos are a rich data set. Most operations can be divided into separate steps; therefore, algorithms can learn to detect these steps after expert annotation.
2. Recognition of surgical instruments
Another application of artificial intelligence is the recognition of surgical instruments. Instrument recognition allows tracking of instruments, resulting in automated gestures and identification of potential errors.
3. Stratify participants into skill levels
Similarly, enhanced learning was used to analyze the suture videos and was also able to stratify participants into three skill levels (novice, intermediate, and expert).
4. Recognition of surgical anatomy
Deep learning models that recognize surgical anatomy have also been developed, and safe and dangerous dissection areas during cholecystectomy have been identified with an accuracy of 0.94 and 0.95.
These combined applications of artificial intelligence will help reduce the learning curve in surgery and the time it takes to reach training skills.
Updated: Jun 28
Personalized surgical education is one of the promising applications of AI in surgery.
We can develop a platform that uses artificial intelligence to provide personalized surgical education and training.
A platform based on an individual's learning style, skill level, and areas of interest.
This could be an innovative way to improve surgical education.