Towards the Future of Surgery

The book provides an overview of the characteristics and skills – both technical and soft - needed to become the surgical leaders of tomorrow.  During the COVID pandemic, the methodological weakness in accessing and disseminating information in has become evident: this has fostered the digital development and has favoured the creation of networks and communities of individuals (not only physicians or surgeons) pointing the way to global knowledge sharing. The development of the technological offer applied to surgery has been very rapid, with the integration of minimally invasive and robotic surgery with artificial intelligence and computerization of decision-making processes, up to the extreme limit of space surgery. However, in the future of this discipline surgeons will no longer need to consider only improved access to knowledge and evolution of technology, as a great challenge will be represented by the parallel development of non-technical skills (leadership, communication, team-working) and by the careful application of healthcare management principles to clinical practice. Finally, in the near future (but already in the present), it will be impossible to ignore the economic impact of high-tech care and equity in access to care.  The book describes a journey, which starts from the history of surgical education to cross the most relevant perspectives of present and future, exploring  new learning models, the thousand applications of artificial intelligence, and surgical technology to the space and back.