Surgical Innovations Annual Summer Retreat

Surgical Innovations (SI) held its annual retreat for the first time virtually on August 28, 2020. Participants were SI leadership, faculty, engineers, Biodevice Innovation Fellows, students, and other collaborators. Introductory remarks were made by the faculty directors Dr. Hanmin Lee and Dr. Shuvo Roy, who highlighted the importance of brainstorming broadly, working with others across disciplines, and looking outside of traditional, medical-technology spaces and to lower-resource settings for innovative solutions when faced with problems. The team then went over various ongoing research projects at SI.

A major focus of this year’s retreat was to identify "Innovations for sustainability in perioperative care." Dr. Mohammad Karimzada, a first year Biodevice Innovation Fellow, gave an overview of “Current Practices in the US,” identifying some of the areas where innovation and sustainable solutions can be developed. He pointed out how much waste is currently produced by hospitals, particularly in the operating room, and noted sustainability practices that hospitals have implemented to address this issue. Dr. Doruk Ozgediz (Pediatric Surgery), Dr. Michael Lipnick (Anesthesia), and Dr. Coleen Sabatini (Orthopedics) shared some experiences on “Real World Evidence from Resource Limited Environments,” and gave examples of local, low-cost innovations that could be adopted by health care providers in the United s-States.

Afterwards all participants actively participated in a brainstorming session and provided some innovative ideas to 1) make OR and perioperative care more efficient and affordable, 2) find sustainable solutions to reduce waste and impact on the economy and environment and 3) to improve ergonomics for surgeons and perioperative staff. In the coming weeks, SI is planning to create work groups to further develop these ideas into clinically applicable products and practices. The participants also engaged in some fun, team building activities, making this virtual retreat a productive and memorable event.