HEALTH TECH
SHIV GAGLANI
Teaching Surgery with an App?
A Look at Touch Surgery
W
also plan to include interventional cardiology procedures on the platform. This will include procedures
such as angiography, angioplasty, aortic aneurysm
stenting, and electrophysiology interventions.
e are well beyond the point of having
apps surprise us with their functionality, so it was no surprise to me
when I first heard about Touch Surgery. The app
has a library of 3D models that enable you to
learn and practice various surgical techniques.
It’s been incredibly well received, with more than
1,800 reviews on the app store and well over
90% of them giving it 5 out of 5 stars. One telling
review reads as follows: “I am a general surgery
resident and I just finished the hernia module.
There is no other training tool like [Touch Surgery].
Step by step instructions and quizzes with amazing graphics. Especially helpful for open surgeries
as there are not simulators and few good videos to
learn from prior to heading to the OR.”
For this month’s Health Tech, I had the opportunity to interview Touch Surgery’s co-founder, Andrew
Chow, MD, and marketing lead, Andy Davis, about
their platform.
What is Touch Surgery?
Currently there are 5 billion people around the
world without access to safe surgical care, and
common surgical pathologies account for over 30%
of worldwide mortality. Our mission is to empower
and connect the global surgical community with
the aim of improving global health care. Touch Surgery is a mobile surgical platform that allows
surgeons from around the world to learn, practice,
and rehearse surgery through interactive surgical
maps. Each map is created by surgical experts from
around the world from places like Stanford, Johns
Hopkins, and Imperial College London, providing
the highest quality surgical education to the global
surgical community. Through improved education
and the tools to allow pre-operative rehearsal and
planning, we help surgeons to ready themselves to
perform at their best in the operating room.
How did you come up with the idea
for Touch Surgery?
Being surgeons ourselves we addressed a real need
that we faced every single day. There is a crisis in
surgical training and education. Not enough surgeons are being trained to account for the immense
need for surgical care around the world. Surgical
ACC.org/CSWN
Where do you see Touch Surgery in 1 year? In 5
years?
Ultimately we want to reach every surgical professional around the world, and make an impact on
their practice. We’d love for this to happen in a year,
but realistically it may take a bit longer!
Anything else you’d like to share?
As we previously mentioned, currently there are
5 billion people around the world without access
to safe surgical care, and common surgical pathologies account for over 30% of worldwide mortality. To address this global problem, surgery as
a profession will need to have a long hard look
at the way that we train and educate the global
surgical community. We believe that Touch Surgery can be part of this journey. ■
Those who are interested
can download the app for free
at these links:
training is still very much an apprenticeship-based
system, and we believed that, using modern technology, we could create tools to impact that pathway,
making it more effective and efficient.
What are the outcome measurements you are
most interested in?
At the end of the day we will judge ourselves on
how many surgeons we can help, and how many
patients’ lives we can affect.
Do you have any specific tools for those involved
in cardiology?
Although currently the platform has focused on surgery (including cardiac surgery), in the next year we
iOS Link:
https://app.adjust.com/hr053i
Android Link:
https://app.adjust.com/4upvm4
Shiv Gaglani is an MD/MBA candidate at the Johns
Hopkins School of Medicine and Harvard Business School.
He writes about trends in medicine and technology and
has had his work published in Medgadget, The Atlantic,
and Emergency Physicians Monthly.
CardioSource WorldNews
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