Lifelike simulations that make real-life surgery safer

What if I told you there
was a new technology

that when placed in the hands
of doctors and nurses,

improved outcomes
for children and adults --

patients of all ages --

reduced pain and suffering,

reduced time in the operating rooms,

reduced anesthetic times,

had the ultimate dose response curve

that the more you did it,

the better it benefitted patients.

Here's a kicker:

it has no side effects

and it's available no matter
where care is delivered.

I can tell you as an ICU doctor
at Boston Children's Hospital

this would be a gamechanger for me.

That technology is life-like rehearsal.

This life-like rehearsal is being
delivered through medical simulation.

I though I would start with a case,

just to really describe
the challenge ahead,

and why this technology is not just
going to improve healthcare,

but why it's critical to healthcare.

This is a child that's born --

young girl --

day of life zero, we call it.

The first day of life,

just born into the world.

And just as she's being born,

we notice very quickly
that she is deteriorating.

Her heart rate is going up,

her blood pressure is going down,

she's breathing very, very fast.

And the reason for this is displayed
in this chest X-ray.

That's called a [baby gram],

and this is full X-ray of a child's body,

a little infant's body.

And as you look on the top side of this,

that's where the hearts and lungs
are supposed to be,

and as you look at the bottom end,

that's where the abdomen is,

and that's where the intestines
are supposed to be,

and you can see how there's sort of
that translucent area

that made its way up and to the right
side of this child's chest.

And that is the intestines,

in the wrong place.

As a result, they're pushing on the lungs

and making it very difficult
for this poor baby to breathe.

The fix for this problem

is to take this child immediately
to the operating room,

bring those intestines back
into the abdomen,

let the lungs expand and allow
this child to breathe again.

But before she can go
to the operating room,

she must get whisked away to the ICU,

where I work,

and I work with surgical teams,

and we gather around her,

and we place this child
on heart-lung bypass.

We put her to sleep,

we make a tiny
little incision in the neck,

we place catheters into the major
vessels of the neck --

and I can tell you that these vessels
are about the size of a pen,

the tip of a pen --

and then we have blood
drawn from the body,

we bring it through a machine,

it gets oxygenated