What a difference a year makes.
Though I was unable to attend the Las Vegas meeting in person, the energy of more than 1,400 attendees being together was virtually contagious. There were so many highlights, including Dr. Horacio Asbun’s moving address, the Presidential Plenary reimagining ways we can all live and thrive as surgeons post COVID, Shark Tank winner Endolumik’s $30,000 prize for its innovative fluorescence-guided calibration system and, of course, the much-missed Sing-Off! I know we’re all grateful the meeting was both successful and healthy.
 As we now look towards the holidays and SAGES 2022 in Denver, we can also be proud of the many committee accomplishments this year. Since my last update, the Technology Council’s second annual Innovation Weekend was held in Houston in June, one of the first in-person meetings of 2021. The third annual Innovation Summit is planned for February 4-5, 2022 in Houston.
Over the summer, I invited Drs. Amin Madani and Aurora Pryor to Chair and Co-Chair, respectively, a new Surgical Data Science (SDS) task force. Access to rich and diverse data remains extremely challenging for our society to pursue a wide breadth of applications, such as video-sharing for coaching, AI research and innovation, and perioperative risk prediction. SDS will explore potential methods and investments SAGES can make to establish large surgical data sets for its membership to pursue research, educational and quality improvement initiatives. We look forward to hearing the group’s recommendations after their zoom retreat this month.
In other committee news, SAGES Video Based Assessment (VBA) task force is creating a task inventory survey for the development of a lap chole VBA as well as beta testing for the lap nissen rubric. The Diversity, Leadership & Professional Development task force has been working on a number of projects, including updated Climate and Demographic surveys, a Cultural Complications curriculum and a Leadership & Professional Development pathway for the larger SAGES Master Program. Finally, FLS testing centers are back running at full capacity, along with remote testing options. The committee is also actively evaluating fresh exam questions against the newly created EPS to ensure we are truly testing what’s in the scope of our mission statement.
It’s hard to believe that it’s just five months until SAGES 2022! Watch upcoming communications for schedule and registration details, along with various submission deadlines at https://www.sages2022.org.