ARTICLE SUMMARY:
As COVID-19, reimbursement shifts, and AI drive enormous change throughout healthcare, Rush University orthopedics professor Frank Phillips discusses their impacts on some of the most intractable challenges in spine surgery.
Innovation in spine surgery is shifting with increasing focus on data-driven technology solutions to clinical and workflow problems and away from traditional biomechanics and implants, a trend that was evident at September’s annual meeting of the North American Spine Society (NASS) in Boston. If motion preservation and arthroplasty were the significant enabling technologies of the recent past, today’s disruption is likely to come from AI-driven technologies that improve diagnostics and clinical decision-making skills.
While the meeting was subdued, unsurprisingly, due to COVID-19 travel and budget restrictions, it revealed the resiliency of this shift, as highlighted in many scientific sessions focused on robotics, navigation, and predictive analytics.
