Biology 1080 - Organ Replacement

Brown University 2008

With an increasing national focus on both patient safety and healthcare costs, there exists considerable pressure to devise new methods to ensure positive patient outcomes. Surgical procedures are particularly scrutinized given the high risk involved and the large degree of variability in surgical skill. This website explores a few methods currently used to improve clinical outcomes for surgical procedures, ranging from technological advancements to public policy initiatives. These methods include:

1. Ensuring patients receive care at high-volume hospitals from experienced surgeons
2. Improved surgical training through computer simulation technologies
3. Robotic surgery and computer assist devices

Each of these methods aims to reduce variability in outcomes patients by one of the two mottos: “practice makes perfect” or “computers are smarter than humans”. Should we make humans act more like robots by building hospitals that function like factories, with surgeons who are highly specialized and patients who are rolled out on conveyer belts? Or should we eliminate humans altogether and perform surgeries with robotic arms and machines that function on artificial intelligence? While these questions present the extremes, data suggests that moving in the direction of super-specialization and surgeries assisted with computer technologies may ultimately improve patient outcomes.