Stories about: surgical innovation

From clinician to clinician-innovator: Designing a surgical innovation fellowship

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Ramos at Boston Children’s Hospital’s 3D printing facility (Photos: Katherine C. Cohen/Boston Children’s)

Gabriel Ramos, MD, is a second-year general surgery resident from Puerto Rico, is Boston Children’s Hospital’s first Surgical Innovation Fellow.

I have devoted considerable time and training to become a surgeon. But I recently took a detour from my surgical education to pursue a research fellowship at Boston Children’s Hospital. I originally applied for a basic science research fellowship, but Dr. Heung Bae Kim – director of the Pediatric Transplant Center at Boston Children’s — described a new Surgical Innovation Fellowship. I decided to apply.

The early-stage nature of the fellowship meant I would not only learn about healthcare innovation, but also shape its future at Boston Children’s Hospital. The idea of learning more about the intersection of innovation, business and surgery was fascinating to me.

I was about to stop thinking as a surgeon – and start thinking as an innovator. …

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From idea to product: 6 tips for surgical innovators

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surgical innovation tips

Gabriel Ramos, MD, is a second-year general surgery resident from Puerto Rico and Boston Children’s Hospital’s first Surgical Innovation Fellow.

Learning how to think like a clinician-innovator is a journey that all clinicians should take. But be forewarned that the journey does not end with developing this new mindset. It starts with it.

What does it take to sustain innovation both inside and outside of the operating room? As a surgical innovation fellow at Boston Children’s Hospital, I learned to go back in time and immerse myself in the mindset of my toddler years, constantly asking “Why?” and “What if…?” This mindset is critical to sustaining innovation and solving clinical, research or administrative pain points.

Often, the hardest part of innovation is coming up with the right idea. Numerous factors must align, especially in surgical innovation, since the typical operating room is a difficult, distracting and stressful environment. …

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Surgical 3-D printing: 300 prints, 16 specialties and counting

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3-D printing is rapidly becoming a part of surgical planning. Since July 2013, Boston Children’s Hospital’s 3-D printing service, part of the Simulator Program, has received about 200 requests from 16 departments around the hospital. It’s generated a total of about 300 prints, most of them replicating parts of the body to be operated on.

Most prints take between 4 and 28 hours to produce. The largest to date—an entire malformed rib cage—took 105 hours and 35 minutes to create and weighed 8.9 pounds. The smallest—a tiny tangle of blood vessels in the brain—took 4 hours and 21 minutes and weighed 1.34 ounces. Here is sampling of what’s been coming off the production line. …

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What’s your innovation style? Lion or ant?

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shutterstock_182805821From a series on researchers and innovators at Boston Children’s Hospital.

Kaifeng Liu, MD, a research fellow at Boston Children’s Hospital, takes his inspiration from ants.

“We’re often amazed by the power of large animals—whales, eagles, lions and tigers,” he says. “But these animals are genetically born with the strength to overpower other animals. Ants are small and hardworking. They work inch by inch and create a teamwork culture. Most of us are like ants. We have an average level of talent and are not able to perform like a lion. But we can work like ants and create beautiful things by working hard as part of a team—day by day, little by little.”

Liu has taken this inch-by-inch approach in a radical redesign of the conventional suturing needle: “I started to play with the surgical needle in graduate school in 1986.”

Nearly three decades later, Liu has devised an extremely short magnetic needle that transforms the current method of suturing—stitching with a needle and thread—that has been used for thousands of years. …

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What happens after a medical hackathon? Lessons from two winning projects

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Judy Wang, MS, is a program manager in the Telehealth Program at Boston Children’s Hospital.

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Hackathons create ideas and excitement, but then reality sets in.

Much has been written about the successes that result from medical hackathons, in which people from across the health care ecosystem converge to solve challenges. For example, PillPack, which formed out of MIT Hacking Medicine, recently closed an $8.75 million funding round. But is this a realistic snapshot of what happens after a hackathon? We took a look at two of the 16 teams that competed at Boston Children’s Hospital’s Hacking Pediatrics last year. …

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Magnetic needle tackles suturing in challenging surgical fields

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magnetic suturing needle
A magnetic needle and thread lets surgeons maneuver in tight spots.
The current method of suturing used in surgery—stitching with a needle and thread—has been around for thousands of years. Kaifeng Liu, MD, a research fellow at Boston Children’s Hospital, hopes to reimagine this fundamental operating room practice. His workbench is filled with various prototypes of a magnetic needle, a device he hopes will make suturing simpler, faster and more efficient for researchers and clinicians alike.

“Sometimes it is the simplest things in medicine that stay the same over time,” says Liu, whose invention will be featured later this week at Boston Children’s Hospital’s Global Pediatric Innovation Summit + Awards 2014 (October 30-31). …

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