2022 Surgeons and Engineers: A Dialogue on Surgical Simulation

Thank you to all who attended the annual Surgeons and Engineers: A Dialogue on Surgical Simulation meeting on Wednesday, March 2, 2022. This full day meeting had a notable success. The virtual meeting attracted 110 registrants from the U.S. and 12 other countries. Nine highly scored abstracts were selected and presented as live oral presentations, and 27 abstracts were presented on a virtual poster presentation site.

The keynote address, "Twenty-year Experience teaching Medtech Innovation to Physician/ Engineer teams: Stanford Biodesign and Fogarty Innovation" was delivered by Dr. Thomas Krummel, MD, FACS/FAAP. For over 35 years, Dr. Krummel has served roles as a surgeon, innovator, educator, and leader. He orchestrated the resurgence of Stanford Surgery as Chair, co-directed the Stanford Byers Center for Biodesign for nearly 20 years, and is also chair of the board of directors at Fogarty Innovation, a not-for-profit Medtech educational incubator.

The Special Panel on Surgeons and Engineers: Successful Collaboration included three experts with significant experience in productive partnerships between surgeons and engineers. The panelists included Dr. Ahmed Ghazi, MD, FEBU, MPHE, Associate Professor of Urology at University of Rochester Medical Center; Dr. Suvranu De, ScD, Professor of Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; and Dr. Amin Madani, MD, PhD, FRCSC, DABS, Director of the Surgical Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at University of Toronto.

An interactive discussion session focused on the following two topics encountered in surgeon and engineer partnerships:

• Surgical Ergonomics
• Industry Discussion – Future of Surgical Simulation