Conference report: Research for Greener Surgery 2023 at the University of Birmingham

The NIHR Global Surgery Unit annual meeting is the highlight of the network, giving the chance for face-to-face contact between the leadership and delivery teams from around the world. This year, it took place in the city of Lagos in Southern Nigeria. We met for 3 days with over 150 participants predominantly from Nigeria, but with representation from 13 other countries: Benin, Canada, Ghana, Guatemala, India, Mexico, Philippines, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Switzerland, UK, and the USA. Although there is a financial and carbon cost to such a meeting, it is incredibly high value in-terms of communication, direction, strategy setting, and capacity building for the future.

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.