Annotated Summary

Wall, J, Krummel, T. (2020). The Digital surgeon: How big data, automation, and artificial intelligence will change surgical practice. Journal of Pediatric Surgery, 55. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpedsurg.2019.09.008

This article focuses on the potential impact of artificial intelligence [AI] to surgery in the future in three main areas: enhancement of training modalities, cognitive enhancement of the surgeon, and procedural automation. The development of AI surgical operations is more complex than diagnostic specialities as they require “preoperative planning”, instantaneous decision making to perform the operation that is based on highly complicated inputs in comparison to radiological and pathological interpretation. However, according to the article, the nature of surgical operations in relation to the development of autonomous cars are similar. Therefore, it is arguable that the application of AI to surgical procedures is eminently achievable. In the aspect of enhancement in the current training modalities, machine learning [ML] has been applied to vast and abundant data sets “from training to stratify surgical skill and recommends personalized training strategies to improve individual deficiencies.”. The article also highlights that cognitive enhancement will allow for the access to a collective medical data and experiences of experts from any part of world for any unpredicted findings during an operation. This will enhance the decision-making ability of the surgeon during complex surgical procedures. Early attempts have been conducted to integrate AI with surgical robots like the Mako and the Aqublation system to reduce tissue damage and the treatment of benign prostatic hypertrophy respectively. Although these surgical systems have yet to be integrated with AI on full fledge, attempts on autonomous performance such as suturing have been made as a catalyst for autonomous surgery.

This article also provides useful ideologies that can be implemented in our system, Medi-Claw, a modification of the da Vinci Surgical System. With the implementation of AI, the surgical system will have a library with full spectrum of resources from ML, to the ability to get instantaneous support from other surgeons around the world. This will enable Medi-Claw to perform minimally invasive surgeries autonomously with high precision and accuracy which relates to the purpose of Medi-Claw.