Journal of Surgical Simulation 2016; 3: A: 4 - 4

Published: 25 February 2016

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1102/2051-7726.2016.A004

Oral presentation

Special Issue: Teaching millennial surgeons: challenges and solutions

Andre Chow
Corresponding author: Andre Chow, Touch Surgery, Lower Ground Floor, 17-18 Hayward's Place, London, EC1R 0EQ, UK. Email: andre@touchsurgery.com

Abstract

Today 5 billion people around the world do not have access to safe surgery. Common surgical pathologies account for over 30% of worldwide mortality, and the world is already facing a global shortage of millions of surgical healthcare providers.  Healthcare systems everywhere are under severe pressure to produce a highly trained surgical workforce to provide high quality care for an ever expanding population. 

In the last 2 years, the team at Touch Surgery has created software to empower and connect the world’s surgical community, based around a mobile platform for iOS and Android, that allows users to simulate, learn, rehearse and discuss surgical procedures anytime and anywhere. Every month, the platform delivers over 25,000 hours of surgical simulation to its global userbase of over half a million users.

Using a proprietary data analytics engine, Touch Surgery is now working together with leading medical institutions from around the world including Stanford, Harvard, New York University (NYU), John Hopkins and Imperial College London, to improve surgical training and dissemination of best surgical practice. Full endorsement from bodies including the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh further supports the company vision to change surgery for the better.

Recently Touch Surgery has reported results from the first series of research studies, showing academic validity of the platform for training, and demonstrating transfer of cognitive skills from a digital platform to an operative environment.

Working together with surgical training institutions, Touch Surgery provides a fully mobile surgical training platform complete with cognitive surgical simulations, that provides state-of-the-art analytics to hospitals, allowing for personalised and real time feedback to surgeons.

Keywords

surgical education; surgical training; smartphone app; surgical rehearsal; millennial surgeons

Additional Information

This presentation was given at the Fifth Annual Homerton Simulation Conference: Innovations in Healthcare, Patient Safety and Simulation, Homerton University Hospital, London, UK, on 10 December 2015.

Conflicts of Interest: Andre Chow is a Co-founder of the healthcare technology company, Touch Surgery.