Surgeons, engineers must work together to advance medical technology
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CHICAGO — Physicians and engineers need to work together to advance surgical technology, according to a speaker at Retina Subspecialty Day at the American Academy of Ophthalmology meeting.
Steven T. Charles, MD, delivered the Charles L. Schepens, MD, Lecture and talked about his career developing different technologies for vitreoretinal surgery. He stressed the importance of collaborating with engineers because technological advancement would not happen without them.
“Techniques and technologies are not independent of each other,” he said. “They’re highly interdependent, and they must evolve in parallel.”
The initial collaboration should occur between a surgeon and maybe one or two engineers, Charles said. Design by committee does not work, but that first concept can lead to further development that more people — whether surgeons or engineers — can contribute to, he said.
Charles shared a plethora of examples of how innovators built upon their predecessors, including in aspiration fluidics, membrane peeling and air/gas injection. In many cases, the initial designers made something that worked but was clumsy or not intuitive. Through years of concepts and design changes, many of these techniques can now be accomplished with tools that are optimized for better outcomes in addition to being ergonomically designed for better comfort, Charles said.
“We’ve gone from 200 cuts a minute to 30,000,” Charles said. “We’ve had cutters that weighed 900 grams, tremendous hand fatigue. Now, they’re 5.3 grams.”
As he went through his examples of technological advancement in vitreoretinal surgery, Charles acknowledged the engineers who helped make those advancements possible. He believes they deserve as much credit as the physicians.
“They must educate each other,” he said. “Engineers don’t know medicine, and surgeons don’t know engineering, and you got to do both to get it right.
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Charles ST. Systems engineering at the intersection of technology and technique. Presented at: American Academy of Ophthalmology meeting; Oct. 18-21, 2024; Chicago.
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