NBT/SDTS 2025

These sessions will explore issues associated with integrating digital technology into surgical practice, evaluating the potential advantages and drawbacks of training and education with digital platforms as well as the changes digital analysis, augmented reality and machine learning can make in the operating room.

This panel will examine how digital integration into the operating rooms will create a new ecosystem for comprehensive feedback and performance improvement and assess the impact that big tech companies can have on procedural medicine.

This session is a new twist on a regular event in the life of surgeons: the morbidity and mortality conference.  M&M is an open forum were a surgeon discusses a complication that occurred from a surgical case with colleagues, analyzing it with an honest view to try to determine what could have been done better to improve the outcome.  This M&M is no different but the surgeons are replaced by innovators and the complication is not from a surgery but from a company and its devices.  We will hear the cases, looking at past decisions and learning in hopes of making better moves in device development in the future. Each panelist will present a company or device followed by feedback from the audience.

The SAGES Shark Tank semi-finals was very well received last year and will be live and in-person again. Ten innovations will be presented and evaluated with audience and panel participation. The finalists will be selected from the group for the Finals at SAGES Annual Meeting in Cleveland. An audience favorite from the semifinals will be announced and previous Shark Tank winners will present an update on their progress. Each semi-finalist will have 8 minutes to present plus discussion.

This dinner discussion will engage three leaders in surgical innovation with broad and varied background to discuss the challenge of driving new technology into the operating room.  New robotic clearances, advanced endolumenal growth, M&A pathways

The my favorites format was very popular last year and returns in full force with new topics.  This session will compare and contrast surgical devices and techniques with short explanations of each approach and a comprehensive question and answer discussion. Panelists will spend one minute describing their approach and then an open debate of technique and devices will continue until potential gaps in the toolset are revealed that could lead to further innovative options for the future of procedures.

This lunch session will take the my favorites format and dive into what clinical problems exist which surgeons find common or important.  The clinic, operating room, and procedure suite all have daily challenges which innovation has failed to fully address.  The panel members will present one of their most relevant challenges and a discussion will proceed to determine why these areas of clinical practice have been so difficult to solve.