News – Blog
19 January 2023
The Global Surgical Training Challenge was a two year prize to enhance low-cost simulation training to surgical practitioners based in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). By creating open source online modules for learning on Appropedia, innovators have created a means for surgeons to learn new procedures via rigorous multimedia online learning plus hands-on practice on simulators that they build themselves.
What makes these simulators so unique is that they are built from locally available materials rather than expensive training devices. The prize challenged innovators to create innovative self assessment processes including techniques such as AI review as well as peer and expert reviews. Learners can validate and hone their own skills rather than rely on the bottleneck of assessment from expert surgeons.
People from 44 countries responded to the initial call for proposals. To keep the focus of the program solidly on surgical problems of most urgency in LMICs, we required that the team leaders for the grants and final prizes be based in LMICs. Ultimately four teams reached the finalist round, and were rigorously evaluated. That process led to declaring a Grand Prize Winner and a Runner-Up Prize.
Funded by The Intuitive Foundation and delivered by us at Challenge Works in collaboration with MIT Solve, The Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and Appropedia, this has been an opportunity to build capacity while simultaneously beginning to change the paradigm of surgical training in LMICs. While the Challenge itself has come to an end, the new self-training surgical model that has come out of this project will continue with support from the Intuitive Foundation through the SELF: Surgical Education Learners Forum.
Team ALL-SAFE, based in Ethiopia with members in Cameroon, Kenya, and the United States, building surgical self-training modules for laparoscopic skills, has been selected as the GRAND PRIZE winner of $700,000 (USD).
Ectopic pregnancy is the leading cause of maternal death, and a significant contributor to infertility in women. Women in sub-Saharan Africa have an increased risk of ectopic pregnancy, with little or no access to minimally invasive, laparoscopic interventions.
ALL-SAFE started the Challenge with a focus on the laparoscopic treatment for ectopic pregnancy in sub-Saharan Africa and expanded to include appendectomy. As with many hospitals in the region, donated equipment lay fallow in operating rooms due to the lack of properly training surgeons to use them.
“Some patients have already benefited from laparoscopic surgery because of our training,” says Dr Grace Kim, co-lead for the ALL-SAFE team and clinical associate professor of surgery at University of Michigan Health. It is an amazing privilege to be able to innovate on behalf of our patients so that safe surgery will be available to all who need it around the world.”
ALL-SAFE plans to continue developing modules, reaching new learners across the globe through scaling their product.
David Jeffcoach M.D. Team Lead, ALL-SAFE
Team Tibial Fracture Fixation (TFF), based in Nigeria, has won the runner-up award of $300,000 to continue their work building modules using 3D printing to teach essential fracture management.
The runner-up team, TFF, uses 3D printed bone models to teach non-orthopedic specialists the various fracture fixation and treatment approaches that may require drilling into bone.
“Being able to train medical officers and non-orthopedic surgeons is a game-changer,” says Dr Habila Umaru, co-team lead for Tibial Fracture Fixation and associate professor of surgery at National Hospital in Abuja, Nigeria. “These funds will inspire us to build more teams, to produce more training modules and also present any clinical research data for clinicians so that they can adapt our model for their practice.”
Catherine Mohr, President, The Intuitive Foundation
Unlike traditional grant programmes, using a challenge prize model for the Global Surgical Training Challenge created a particularly rich culture of healthy competition, but also a sense of community. The prize happened in stages, where smaller grants called Discovery and Finalists Awards, were given out to the most promising teams in development, allowing them to propel their ideas into reality.
“The Challenge empowered us to show the world how surgical practitioners, educators, and innovators can work together to transform the paradigm of surgical education.” says TFF team co-lead Dr Julielynn Wong, a physician, educator and social entrepreneur.
Alongside The Intuitive Foundation we recruited a panel of expert judges, as well as various organisations and learners to test drive and evaluate the modules that were developed by the innovator teams. Both ALL-SAFE and TFF have reflected that while one of the benefits has been financial support, they found the non-financial support provided by the challenge model to be invaluable. Being able to validate their work and grow their teams has been an experience in itself for ALL-SAFE.
Every prize we run has a judging panel of experts on board who decides the winners based on the robust criteria we agreed at the beginning of the Challenge. This ensures the process is clear for the innovators, but also for the judges in their decision making. For this particular prize, and out of the four finalists, two were able to get as close as they could to the criteria for winning.
We take pride in being able to offer a different structure to grant programmes that clearly makes such a difference to our partners and the innovators competing.
“Challenge Works has a deep experience in running these big multinational prizes in complex medical areas. And it was that combination of being able to help us put an international judging panel together, and coordinate how the prize should be structured. This is why we chose to work with Challenge Works, and it’s been an excellent partnership.” says Catherine Mohr, President of Intuitive Foundation.
Launching at COSECSA in 2022, the SELF: Surgical Education Learners Forum is an exciting spin-off building on the success of the Challenge.
“SELF is the future of surgical training.” says Catherine Mohr. “See one. Teach yourself one. Do one. We want to be able to change the scale of traditional surgical training by allowing learners to teach themselves independent of any presence of a teacher.”
Its aim is to encourage and provide grants to innovators to continue creating modules and for those looking for more accessible ways to train in their surgical skills. It will include partnering with organisations and health facilities to continue with clinical validating new training modules.
We look forward to seeing the outcomes and impact of the Global Surgical Training Challenge grow and help become the future of surgical training through SELF.
Thank you to The Intuitive Foundation for helping make this happen.
