In a recent presentation at the Future Surgery show, Professor Prokar Dasgupta, professor of surgery, King’s College London, considered the ‘digital future of surgery’. He highlighted some key innovations coming to the fore – from an octopus-inspired robot with a sense of touch, to technology that enables clinicians to remotely “scrub in” to the OR.
Before the pandemic, Eric Topol, a US cardiologist, was asked by the UK health secretary to prepare an independent report outlining how the hospital workforce can prepare for the “digital future.” He predicted that, within the next 20 years, approximately 90% of all jobs in the NHS workforce will require some type of digital skills.1
In his report, he outlined the top 10 technology advances impacting healthcare and their magnitude of disruption. These included:
Professor Prokar Dasgupta noted that we already have telemedicine (the pandemic has increased the speed of adoption) and there are a number of organisations reading the genome – which proved to be pivotal in tackling COVID-19, from vaccine development to allowing researchers to monitor how SARS-CoV-2 is mutating. But which technologies will have the greatest impact on surgery?
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