The Surgeon's Role in the Application of AI in Surgery

Surgeons need to help drive innovation in surgery, instead of passively waiting for AI to become useful.

To ensure all patients are included, surgeons should seek to expand their involvement in clinical data registries because a lack of data can limit the predictions made by AI algorithms.

Surgeons should seek opportunities to collaborate with data scientists and ML engineers to capture new forms of clinical data and create meaningful interpretations of it.

Surgeons have the clinical insight to answer the right questions with the right data.

Big data has the potential to create GPS-like intraoperative guidance.

A GPS for surgery, trained on millions of surgery videos, providing decision support for surgeons around the world.

It is important for surgeons to demand transparency and interpretability of AI.

AI should be held accountable for its predictions and recommendations.

In order to properly convey the results of complex analyses such as risk predictions, and treatment algorithms to patients within the appropriate clinical context, an understanding of AI will be essential.

Surgeons should contribute to the application of AI in surgery.