A Digital Doorway to Global Surgery

Hachach-Haram, Nadine

By 2015, the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery paved the way for surgical services to be formally incorporated within the rights-based concept of universal health care (UHC), the WHO’s classification of medical treatments, and care to which all people should have equal access as a fundamental and inalienable right. But in doing so, the commission also outlined inequalities and structural shortcomings which, ultimately, deny that right to five in every seven people on the planet, setting out the size of the challenge that healthcare faces worldwide in delivering safe, affordable, fit-for-purpose surgery to everyone who needs it. In this chapter, the case is presented for how digital technology can serve a pivotal role in making surgery accessible to the global population. First, the challenges facing healthcare providers in the wake of the Lancet Commission are examined, posing the argument that structural barriers affecting access to surgical care, cost of care rendered, and quality of care are not just restricted to the world’s developing nations, but affect the most highly developed national surgical services as well. The ability to leverage digital technology to overcome these challenges by creating new paradigms for how surgical expertise is addressed. Specifically, how surgical expertise is nurtured, developed, and shared is explored.