Thank you to all who attended the annual Surgeons and Engineers: A Dialogue on Surgical Simulation meeting on Wednesday, March 13, 2024. This full-day in-person meeting had notable success. The meeting attracted 120 attendees from the U.S. and 7 other countries. Nine highly scored abstracts were selected and presented as oral presentations, and 36 abstracts were presented as poster presentations.
The keynote address, “Developing an Ecosystem of Innovation and Entrepreneurship to Advance the Future of Surgery and Academic Medicine,” was delivered by Mark S. Cohen, MD, FSSO, FACS.
Dr. Cohen is the Dean of the Carle Illinois College of Medicine and Senior Vice President and Chief Academic Officer for Carle Health. He is a practicing surgical oncologist and endocrine surgeon and a tenured professor of surgery and biomedical and translational sciences at the Carle Illinois College of Medicine. He is also a founder professor in The Grainger School of Engineering in the Department of Bioengineering, as well as professor at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. His research covers several areas, including novel approaches to tissue engineering to create functional organs from fat stem cells; the creation of a novel class of anticancer drug compounds that target chaperone proteins; nanoparticle drug delivery-systems for cancer and bone regeneration; and the use of mixed reality and AI/ML technologies to improve telemedicine and clinical care delivery, as well as healthcare workforce training and education.
The Special Panel on Surgeons and Engineers: How to Build Better Surgical Simulators - Part 2 included a surgeon educator, an academic engineer, and an expert from the surgical simulator industry. The panel built upon the discussion from the 2023 Surgeons and Engineers to refine the dialogue of how to improve surgical simulators. The panelists included John T. Paige, MD, FACS, Louisiana State University Health New Orleans School of Medicine, Ganesh Sankaranarayanan, PhD, University of Texas Southwestern, and Henry Lin, PhD, Intuitive Surgical.
The inaugural Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Simulator/Model Competition received 25 entries. The competition highlighted the innovative spirit of the surgical simulation community and garnered much interest from attendees. The first-place awardee was Ritika Pansare from Michigan Medicine 3D & Innovations Lab for the “Low-Cost Oocyte Retrieval Simulator.” The People’s Choice award, as voted on by meeting attendees, was awarded to Jenny Garnett from the University of Washington’s Institute for Simulation in Healthcare for the simulator “Training Model for Cranial Burr Holes.”
