Surgical Data Science: Enabling Next-Generation Surgery

TL;DR

This paper defines Surgical Data Science as a new discipline that leverages large-scale data and machine learning to improve decision-making and quality in interventional medicine, based on expert consensus.

Contribution

It establishes a formal definition for Surgical Data Science, discusses key challenges and opportunities, and outlines a roadmap for future research in the field.

Findings

Consensus definition of Surgical Data Science

Identification of key challenges and opportunities

Proposed roadmap for advancing the field

Abstract

This paper introduces Surgical Data Science as an emerging scientific discipline. Key perspectives are based on discussions during an intensive two-day international interactive workshop that brought together leading researchers working in the related field of computer and robot assisted interventions. Our consensus opinion is that increasing access to large amounts of complex data, at scale, throughout the patient care process, complemented by advances in data science and machine learning techniques, has set the stage for a new generation of analytics that will support decision-making and quality improvement in interventional medicine. In this article, we provide a consensus definition for Surgical Data Science, identify associated challenges and opportunities and provide a roadmap for advancing the field.