Café Scientifique -Join us for an insight webinar with Dr. Carla Pugh as she shares some of her research on surgical metrics and haptics in surgery.

Digital surgery and the metrics of surgical performance are now mainstream goals in healthcare. There are several industry groups making huge waves in this space and the future is both bright and exciting. Despite the great potential for positive impact, patient care and surgical outcomes, there are still many questions unanswered when it comes to surgical metrics and performance. Haptics, the science of touch, provides a lens into some of the unanswered questions by allowing us to understand and categorize technical decisions, efficiency, and surgical mastery. Dr. Pugh will share some of her research on surgical metrics and discuss how this work provides insight into the hidden world of haptics in surgery.

Carla Pugh

Carla Pugh, MD, PhD, FACS is a Professor of Surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine and Director of the Technology Enabled Clinical Improvement (T.E.C.I.) Center. Her clinical area of expertise is Acute Care Surgery and her research involves the use of simulation and advanced engineering technologies to develop new approaches for assessing and defining competency in clinical procedural skills.

Dr. Pugh obtained her undergraduate degree at UC Berkeley in Neurobiology and her medical degree at Howard University School of Medicine. Upon completing her surgical training at Howard University Hospital, she attended Stanford University to obtain her PhD in Education. She is considered to be a leading, international expert on the use of sensors and motion tracking technologies for performance measurement. Her goal is to use technology to change the face of medical and surgical education.

Dr. Pugh holds multiple patents on the use of sensor and data acquisition technology to measure and characterize hands-on clinical skills. Currently, over two hundred medical and nursing schools are using one of her sensor-enabled training tools for their students and trainees. Her work has received numerous awards from medical and engineering organizations, including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from President Barack Obama at the White House in 2011. In 2014, she was invited to give a TEDMED talk on the potential uses of technology to transform how we measure clinical skills in medicine. Recently, Dr. Pugh was inducted into the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (April 2018), the American College of Surgeons Academy of Master Surgeon Educators (April 2019), as well as the American Board of Surgery Council (February 2020).

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