To fill the gap of technical superiority, industry-academia partnerships should initiate programmes that allow the surgical residents to get acquainted with the future of surgical care, says Dr SVS Deo
With the union budget of 2021 focusing like never before on Healthcare through the three-pronged, holistic approach - including preventive care, curative care, and well-being, there will be a bigger push toward a healthier country. To meet the demand for healthcare solutions that was generated last year, there has been many frugal state-of-the-art innovations associated with touchless diagnostic tools, ventilators, medical and surgical devices that support better patient outcomes and faster healthcare administration in hospitals.
At a national scale, there has been an unprecedented push towards digitisation through upskilling across sectors. The main reason why it is considered as an ‘unprecedented push towards digitalisation’, is because this was not limited to just the key employees who were used to the IT infrastructure that was provided, but also all the support staff that included the Admin, HR, Finance, Training and development, etc. to get aligned with the new protocols of communication and also be effectively able to perform the organisations functions without any lacuna. This sea of change was not any different for the health care professionals of the country.
Without any differentiation of urban or rural, all doctors were expected to get used to online consultations, ordering online diagnostics and prescriptions, resulting in the patients getting the said medicines at home, based on the diagnosis. While there was initial reluctance by some of the doctors and staff, everyone was quick to overcome their limitations in technology for the larger benefit of the patients and the country at large. The demand for healthcare solutions also prompted fast-tracking digitisation initiatives by the Government and providers. One such game changer was the Government approval for telemedicine usage in India. This changed the landscape of how doctor-patient visits were being managed in India, resulting in making healthcare more accessible to both urban and rural areas across the country.
Another outcome of the pandemic has been the acceptance of the larger public to become more willing to undergo regular health check-ups to ensure that they remain healthy. This has resulted in identifying more people with different adverse health conditions. This situation has put additional stress on the current healthcare ecosystem resulting in the need for better and faster treatment protocols to support patient care and outcomes. This is an area that can be upgraded by upskilling the medical fraternity. While there ismultiple such continuing medical education for Masters in Medicine (MD), there are only limited options for Masters in Surgery (MS) specialisations, related to new age technology.
To fill this gap of technical superiority, industry academia partnerships should initiate programmes that allow the surgical residents to get acquainted with the future of surgical care. Such programmes should engage with resident surgeons/fellows early on in their career, equipping them with knowledge on robotic/tech-enabled surgery and its clinical applications. Facilitating such programmes with Robotic-Assisted Surgery (RAS) will allow the residents to understand the functionality, and scope for such tech-enabled surgical procedures.
These kind of programmes can give the budding surgeons theoretical knowledge about how the robot works, and the clinical applications of the technology that will be imparted by trained and successful RAS practitioner. Early RAS sensitisation programmes may lead to better adoption of technology which could result in not just reducing the learning curve, but also enable the country’s surgical healthcare landscape to function more effectively.
The writer is Professor & Head, Department of Surgical Oncology, BRA-IRCH, AIIMS, Delhi
