Fortune Favors the Bold

If you’re like me, you might have found yourself spending more time than usual on the sofa watching TV over the holidays. I have two observations:

1)???There are a lot of TV commercials that seem to run on repeat (and I still don’t want to become an MVP by getting a new lower auto rate with Allstate).

2)???The graphics in video games have advanced considerably since my Xbox 360 but you still can’t beat the original It’s a Wonderful Life.

A third thing that caught my eye was a new cryptocurrency ad. It features Matt Damon taking viewers on a historical journey of brave men and women who’ve made a difference in the world, in the hopes of inspiring people to “be their bravest selves.”

In the ad, he refers to the Latin proverb “audentes fortuna iuvat” or “fortune favors the bold.” While some might debate if success is really about luck or brave choices, I believe life presents us with opportunities, and it’s up to us to make the most out of them. Welcoming the new year has always been an opportunity to think about the future.

I believe we’re at the dawn of a new era in surgery. As the pandemic accelerated society’s digital transformation, surgery is at a unique crossroads. With the combination of an impending surgeon shortage, the pressure to reduce healthcare costs and increase margins in the wake of COVID-19, and the emergence of technologies such as augmented intelligence (AI) and machine learning, surgery as we know it today is at a tipping point.

It’s no longer enough to maintain today’s surgical standard. One in five patients undergoing an operation has one or more complications.[i] That can translate to increased length of stay, repeat surgery, additional medical treatment, legal issues, and increased costs. Surgery is also being performed by many different physicians with different levels of skill, experience, and training. This makes consistent outcomes and quality patient care challenging to achieve.

We must embrace the opportunity and commit to empowering surgeons around the globe with the tech-enabled tools and Clinical Intelligence they need to deliver the best patient outcome—every time. If we stay the current course, hoping that after twenty years robotic-assisted surgery will suddenly address the current shortcomings around untenable per-procedure costs and surgical variability, we’re doomed to fail.

The future of surgery demands a different criterion for success and 2022 will be a critical year to make meaningful progress towards this elevated standard. The digital transformation underway means that we can move beyond what has become the standard in surgery and look to the future—a new era of Performance-Guided Surgery which refers to the incorporation of next-level technology that will completely change the idea of what’s possible in surgery.

• With AI and computational technology growing exponentially and building in other industries, we must accelerate its integration into the OR. Surgeon decisions can be smarter and faster, which is crucial in the high-pressure, highly variable situations that happen repeatedly during any surgery. This is at the core of driving surgical outcomes and improving patient care.
• We should preserve the precision and control afforded by robotics but must reduce added per-procedure costs and support the transition to appropriate cost-of-care settings, like ASCs. This is of paramount importance as value-based care accelerates in the pursuit of the Triple Aim.
• We must take care of our surgeons so they can take care of an aging and increasingly complex patient population. This requires providing a working environment that allows the surgeon to be seated in a position to minimize strain and fatigue to help reduce burnout, decrease muscular-skeletal disorders, and extend careers to help mitigate the expected surgeon shortage.
• We must find new ways to help scale procedural efficiency, surgical skill, and optimal patient outcomes. One way is to enable remote collaboration with a telemonitoring platform that allows peers from around the world to remotely observe a surgical procedure and have expert surgeons share best practices. This played an important role during the pandemic and will only become more valuable.

At Asensus, our focus is on digitizing the interface between the surgeon and patient to pioneer a new standard of surgery for increased control, less variability, and consistently superior outcomes. When you add machine vision, augmented intelligence, and deep learning capabilities to robotics, you can improve decision making, provide enriched collaboration, and enhance procedure predictability. The impact: the best possible patient outcomes independent of surgeon skill level, training, and experience.

This is the future of surgery. The ancient Greek philosopher Democritus said, "Boldness is the beginning of action, but fortune controls how it ends." In other words, fortune's favor is something that must be earned through a discipline of dauntlessness. In 2022, let’s be bold and undaunted. It will make all the difference in the world.

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Anthony Fernando is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Asensus Surgical, Inc., a medical device company that is digitizing the interface between the surgeon and the patient to pioneer a new era of Performance-Guided Surgery.

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Endnotes:?

[i] Eelke Bosma, MD, et al. Variable impact of complications in general surgery: a prospective cohort study. Can J Surg. 2012 Jun; 55(3): 163–170.