Supporting responsible surgical innovation

Professor Wendy Rogers and Dr Katrina Hutchison

Groups related to this event

Centre for Health Informatics
Centre for Health Systems and Safety Research
Centre for Healthcare Resilience and Implementation Science

Event Date

Tuesday, 21 April 2015

Innovation may occur through changes in surgical technique, through using existing tools or devices in novel ways, or when entirely new operations, tools or devices are developed. Some innovations are easy to recognize, but at times it may be difficult to distinguish innovation from variations in practice or from research. However, this distinction is important for two main reasons. First, innovation raises a number of specific ethical issues including potentially increased risk of harm to patients, challenges to informed consent, conflicts of interest, and questions of healthcare resource allocation. Second, innovation can only be justified if it leads to better patient outcomes. This means that we need to identify innovation in order to trigger processes that will generate and collect evidence about the effectiveness of the innovation.

This paper presents the results of a three year project investigating how to identify surgical innovation and the ethical issues faced by innovating practitioners. One outcome of this research is tool that we have developed for identifying instances of innovation, which can be used to trigger appropriate supports.

Speaker Profiles:

Wendy Rogers is Professor of Clinical Ethics at Macquarie University. Her current research interests include the ethics and regulation of surgical innovation, and ethics and evidence in surgical research. She is a member of the NHMRC's Australian Health Ethics Committee, and chairs the NSW Health Clinical Ethics Advisory Panel.

Katrina Hutchison has a background in Philosophy. She is currently a post- doctoral researcher in bioethics at Macquarie University. Her current projects include an ARC linkage led by Professor Wendy Rogers, "On the cutting edge: Promoting best practice in surgical innovation", and ethics and evidence in surgical research

Date: Tuesday 21 April, 2015

Time: 12noon to 1pm

Venue: Seminar Room Level 1, 75 Talavera Rd Macquarie University

Chairperson: A/Professor David Greenfield