Digital Medical School: New Paradigms for Tomorrow’s Surgical Education

Abstract

In this review, we give an overview of the future digital medical school, exploring new paradigms for tomorrow’s surgical education. We briefly explore three perspectives from within the digital medical school, including how digital technologies will augment surgical education, enable early training, and prepare future global surgeons for digital health in high- and low-resource settings. We start by reviewing the core skill competencies and new roles of medical students, which include: digital leader, super-communicator, multidisciplinary collaborator, data-driven decision-maker, and community leader. Ten use cases of digital technologies in surgical contexts are illustrated within the three broad categories of digital medicine, artificial intelligence and robotics, and genomics. Each use case is compared from an earlier and later perspective, for surgical education and then surgical training preparedness, respectively. The third and final perspective explores how medical students will prepare to become digital surgeons in global settings. Opportunities are presented in the context of improving access, quality, and affordability of surgical care, and also with regard to addressing global workforce shortages, enabling the expansion of clinical expertise, and preparing for population projections. Finally, we conclude with a summary of key recommendations that work toward realizing the next generation of the global digital surgical workforce. The three broad recommendation topics explored include partnerships and capacity, ecosystems and evidence, and investment and engagement. The aim of this review is to provide a high-level view of the opportunities of digital surgery in medical schools of the future. Along the way, state-of-the-art technologies and future directions are also reviewed.