LHS Labs is proud to celebrate the incredible success of the 5th Annual Surgical Innovation Week, hosted in partnership with The University of British Columbia’s Department of Surgery. This year, we embraced the theme “Care Anywhere”, exploring groundbreaking solutions to extend high-quality surgical care beyond hospital walls.
As Canada faces increasing demands on its healthcare system, reducing the hospital footprint while maintaining high standards of care is more critical than ever. Five interdisciplinary teams of UBC General, Cardiac, and ENT Surgery Residents, alongside Engineers in Scrubs participated in a week-long workshop, receiving training from the renowned design thinking models from Stanford, Hopkins, and Alder Hey Innovation, tailoring them to the unique context of Canadian healthcare.
Among the remarkable projects presented, TubeCheck emerged as this year’s winning innovation. This groundbreaking product is designed to improve the safety of managing complex patients at home, a crucial step in enabling high-quality, remote healthcare. More than just a competition, Surgical Innovation Week is an incubator for the next generation of healthcare leaders. The curriculum equips participants with vital problem-solving skills, empowering them to drive real change in the healthcare landscape.
This year’s event was generously sponsored by our partners: Deloitte Vancouver and VGH & UBC Hospital Foundation. A special thank you to Dr. Iain Hennessey, our guest Surgeon Innovator from Alder Hey Innovation, whose insights and mentorship throughout the week inspired participants to think bigger and push further. We were also honored to have Dr. Jack Pacey, MD, FRCSc, inventor of the GlideScope, and an expert panel of judges lending their expertise to the event.
Over the past five years, our 60+ alumni Surgeon Innovators and Biomedical Engineers have gone on to lead hospital transformation projects, advise start-ups, and apply cutting-edge technology to solve persistent healthcare challenges. With a target to train 200 clinician innovators over the next five years, we aim to create a robust pipeline of projects at the intersection of surgery, engineering, business, and healthcare administration. Our graduates, many of whom pursue further innovation training or join healthcare technology companies, are a testament to the program’s success in fostering empathetic physicians who prioritize patient-centric solutions.
The solutions developed during Surgical Innovation Week 2024 mark just the beginning. The true success lies in the mindset shift these clinician-innovators have undergone—equipped with design thinking, entrepreneurial acumen, and a patient-first approach, they are ready to reshape the future of healthcare in British Columbia and beyond.