Normal View Dyslexic View
Conference report: NIHR Global Surgery Unit: Lagos, Nigeria 2023
19 October 2023
Guest Blog General
Related articles
Conference report: Research for Greener Surgery 2023 at the University of Birmingham
Virginia Ledda
NIHR Global Health Research Unit on Global Surgery
Institute of Applied Health Research
University of Birmingham, UK
Purpose The inaugural Research for Greener Surgery Conference took place at the University of Birmingham on 13 December 2023, attended by 290 delegates in-person and over 800 people online. The Conference aimed to build knowledge around sustainability in operating theatres and to raise awareness of a new body of research funded by the NIHR aiming to create environmentally sustainable operating theatres in the NHS. We explored the challenges of implementing and evaluating sustainability initiatives and of translating research into policy. Sustainable surgery research
Conference report: The Royal Free x ASiT x PLASTA Hackathon – hacking the future of sustainability and chatbots in surgery
Zahra Ahmed, Alexander Zargaran, Matthew Harris, Angela Lam, Christian Asher, Allan Ponniah, Ali Esmaeili, Afshin Mosahebi
Sustainable surgery, healthcare efficiency and the use of MedTech and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are three major focus points for healthcare systems worldwide. In the United Kingdom, the National Healthcare Service accounts for a quarter of UK public sector emissions 1. With the UK government targeting net zero by 2050, there is an urgent need for increased sustainability in surgery and healthcare to meet this target 2. Furthermore, healthcare costs are rising; governmental healthcare expenditure grew 9.6% between 2020 and 2021, the fastest year-on-year growth rate since records began in 1997 3. This emphasises the need to improve efficiency to make budgets stretch further. AI in healthcare has the potential to increase efficiency and it has been reported that generative AI will grow faster in health care than any other sector 4. In order to tackle the questions that come with these changes to healthcare systems, innovations and innovators are needed.
A collaborative Hackathon between the Royal Free Plastic Surgery Department, the Association of Surgeons in Training (ASiT) and the Plastic Surgery Trainees Association (PLASTA) was held on the 9-10 th October 2023 at the Royal Free Hospital. This was following the successful Royal Free*PLASTA Hackathon in November 2022. In attendance were 58 talented and entrepreneurial-minded delegates, speakers and mentors from ground-breaking start-ups including CMR Surgical and judges from a range of backgrounds including Professors of Plastic Surgery, Business Professors and the founder of Proximie.
The Royal Free Hackathon had three main aims for delegates to focus their innovations revolving around (i) making surgery more sustainable, (ii) the use of ChatBots to improve healthcare outcomes and (iii) how to improve operating room efficiency.
Future of scientific surgical publication
Jonothan Earnshaw, Directory of BJS Academy, delivers his talk ‘Future of scientific surgical publication’. A reprise of his presentation at the Association of Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland (ASGBI)’s 2024 Annual Meeting.