- In the U.S., approximately 48 million surgeries
occur each year,
and about 2% of those will have some sort
of unintended complication—
that's almost a million patients who are affected.
- There are multiple examples of how
more efficient surgeons lead to better outcomes.
How do we go from a complete novice surgeon
to one who is a master?
For the last decade, we've really tried
to understand, quantify surgeon performance.
Robotic surgery, it's digital.
Suddenly, we have the ability to not only collect the data,
but also to analyze the data.
- And by being able to capture
exactly what happens during an operation,
that will give us the opportunity to understand
what makes a good surgery,
what makes a safe surgery.
- Right now, what we're seeing
is just the tip of the iceberg.
The potential for this is endless.
- If we decode surgery,
surgical data science will transform robotic surgery.
Hi, I'm Andrew Hung.
I am a Urologist and Robotic Surgeon.
What I love about robotic surgery
is through small incisions,
we can do the most complex operations.
Patients recover faster.
The wounds look like we were barely there.
So, 'See One, Do One, Teach One,' is
the long-standing Halsted principle
of surgical training.
The idea is that
if you can mimic the behavior of your mentor,
that somehow you have the expertise to teach it.
The problem is that we don't have great ways
of quantifying, objectively, how a surgeon operates,
nor do we have a way of associating
how well they do in the operating room
to patient outcomes.
How do you optimize the training for surgeons?
I thought that there had to be a better way,
a more methodical way,
and so that was the very beginnings of my research.
- I think data science has the potential
to transform all surgery.
I'm Gretchen Purcell Jackson.
I am a Vice President and Scientific Medical Officer
at Intuitive.
There are many different ways of doing an operation,
and many nuances that we are just starting to appreciate
about how surgeons move their hands or handle tissue.
With robotic surgery in particular,
we are able to take not only that video data,
but incorporate information that we get
from the robotic device.
- So over the years, we had the privilege to work
with Intuitive to try to understand
what data can we collect
at the time of surgery from the surgeon—
and how can we process that information
in a way that is helpful to the surgeon.
What specifically was done well, and what was not done well?
And one of the approaches to processing this information
has been artificial intelligence.
For the last seven years or so, we've been able
to collect surgical video.
We wanna plug it into a deep learning model
and we wanna provide the surgeon
a very granular assessment of how well they are suturing.
- With some of the technologies
that we're building like the My Intuitive App,
we have the ability to give surgeons very explicit feedback
about what they are doing.
- It's not just, "yes, good, and bad,"
but actually where they're good, and where are they bad.
- Hey, have a second?
- Yeah, come on in.
I was actually just looking at our case from yesterday.
- Oh great.
- I'm Ankit Patel, Associate Professor of Surgery
at Emory University, and currently the
Director of the Robotics Surgery curriculum
for the General Surgery Residency program.
In the traditional model,
we rely on the resident to prep for the case.
Unfortunately, there's no way
of really knowing what they've done to prepare.
With the residents signed up
to the My Intuitive App or the system,
you can actually look at what their experience is
and give them parameters on what to focus on,
what to improve.
We have a training algorithm for every case
and as they improve or hit milestones,
they get to perform more of the case, in subsequent cases.
I think there's a few little movements here—
maybe grabbed a little bit more tissue than you wanted,
but overall, very smooth.
We can track data such as efficiency.
We can measure the instruments
that are actually being used,
how are they using them?
- Looking at your duration
of utilization of instruments,
looking at the actual points
in the operation where you slowed down.
Being able to take that information
and look at it after your operation
really improves your skill set
in a practical application standpoint.
- At the end of the day, we are trying to train
the surgeons of the future,
and with this app and with this data,
we've become a powerhouse for robotic education.
- Very often in the health care system
data are stored in silos,
and held very tightly by a small set of individuals.
And one of the things that we are doing
are giving surgeons access to their own data.
So the ability to observe, the ability to be mentored,
and the ability to be able to grow
and develop right during their day-to-day workflow.
- For the first time,
surgeons are actually getting their data in real-time.
This is going to be the future of surgery.
- My hope for surgical data science is that
in the next few years we really distill surgery down
to the essence.
And so when it comes to our new surgeons
and when we're teaching them surgery,
that we can tell them that this is the best way to do it.
It's backed by science.