Collaborations


Community-Based Collaboration: Empowering women to take charge of their breast health

Fostering Stanford’s synergetic nature, the Stanford Cancer Institute (SCI) and the T.E.C.I. Center have joined forces to promote a personally interactive and hands-on breast health learning experience.

An important mission of the SCI is to disseminate cancer information and education to Greater Bay Area communities, with a particular emphasis on reaching minority and medically underserved populations. SCI seeks authentic, consistent engagement with diverse communities to understand community needs, provide information and learn more about what we do not know.

Special thanks to Pamela Ratliff, Associate Director of Educational Initiatives and Partnerships at Stanford Cancer Institute, for her continuous dedication to this collaborative effort.


The Surgical Metrics Project

The Surgical Metrics Project was introduced at the 2019 American College of Surgeons Clinical Congress in San Francisco, CA. The project provides participants with the opportunity to engage in an exploration of the use of wearable technologies to measure surgical decision making and surgical technique.

“The Surgical Metrics Project is the foundation of assessing surgical technique,” according to American College of Surgeons Executive Director David B. Hoyt, MD, FACS. “Once validated it can define how we might measure skills acquisition, obtain mastery, and even demonstrate deterioration of skills over time.”

The College is proud to announce the continuation of its strategic partnership with the T.E.C.I. Center and plans to continue offering The Surgical Metrics Project at Clinical Congress.


Research Collaboration with Theator: AI-based analyses of operative videos to identify characteristic performance and teaching patterns

This work builds on existing work using an AI- based system for analysis of surgical procedures developed by Theator. Our research collaboration will focus on using this system to calculate common motion metrics, path length, smoothness and idle time, from video data. We will attempt to identify patterns consistent with portions of the procedure performed by attendings and portions performed by residents. This will allow for an objective assessment of resident autonomy and percentage of the procedure performed by the resident. We will compare this with subjective assessment of resident autonomy and percentage of the procedure performed by the resident as reported in the SIMPL app currently being used in the Department of surgery. By reporting these values for individual attending surgeons and trainees as compared to the mean, we will be able to have a more robust discussion of teaching style and resident performance. We will also be able to segment procedures to look specifically at critical steps (i.e. putting ports in, dissecting anatomy and look at the time to complete each step and errors that occur during each step).