Innovation at the Cutting Edge

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Surgery, by its reliance on manual skills, lends itself to technological innovation that can resulting in staggering advances in patient care. A now common example is minimally invasive surgery. Such advances are desperately needed to address spiralling healthcare costs and a rapidly growing ageing population. Surgical innovation today is relevant to i) Devices, ii) Surgeon Training, iii) Simulation, iv) Diagnosis, v) Patient and Care Pathway Tracking, vi) Risk Reduction, vii) Surgical planning, viii) Tools to reduce variability in skill and outcome, e.g. cutting and drill guides, ix) Healing monitoring and ix) Rehabilitation**This industrial stream CREATE proposal provides a unique opportunity for graduate trainees preparing to enter the surgical devices sector. We have developed a cross-disciplinary team based approach to graduate education combining the expertise of École de Technologie Supérieur (ETS), McGill Department of Surgery, John Molson School of Business, (JMSB), and Engineering and Computer Sciences, Concordia University all located within a maximum of 1.5km of each other in downtown Montreal. Trainees undertake internships with our 15 industrial partners to develop their technical and professional skills.**There are two disruptive yet exciting aspects to our approach i) the students work in surgeon-business-Natural Science and Engineering (NSE) teams for cycles of one year and ii) the emphasis of their training is the process of innovation. We apply a surgical innovation education model first instigated at Stanford University over a decade ago for the first time in Canada. Our industrial partners were surveyed regarding professional skills deficits encountered in PhD and Masters recruits and we assembled a program to address them. PhD and PDRF participate further as innovation project managers and gain a Certificate in Business Administration.****