Surgeons to hone skills with DVD training

The project aims to help save patients lives by making it easier for doctorsto prepare for tricky operations, while also turning a profit for the company

An Irish surgeon has teamed up with the production firm which made the You're a Star RTÉ television series to create a monthly surgical training course available on interactive DVD.

The project, pioneered by start-up firm Reality Surgery Ltd, hopes to help save patients' lives by making it easier for surgeons to prepare for tricky operations.

Company founders Prof Tom Walsh of the Royal College of Surgeons and Mr Chris Goodey, managing director of Éireann Publications and First Medical Publications, believe the project will also turn a big profit.

They have recently appointed a new managing director, Mr David McLean, and are now seeking early stage funding of €1.8 million to commercialise the DVD project.

"The idea of commercialising video surgery came from Prof Walsh, who is a consultant surgeon at Blanchardstown Hospital," says Mr McLean, who worked in the pharmaceutical industry for 10 years before joining Reality Surgery as managing director.

"Surgeons often want to see how a particular operation is performed before doing it themselves and Tom realised that the video day at the Royal College of Surgeons was one of the best attended meets of the year."

He thought that if they could only bottle the video technique and sell it, they could make a fortune, he says.

That is exactly what Prof Walsh and his friend, Mr Goodey, are now trying to do. Last March, they formally set up Reality Surgery and developed a business plan for the start-up.

"We plan to create broadcast quality videos from three different camera angles of surgical operations which are stored on DVDs. The DVDs can be used to create a journal containing hundreds of different surgical procedures," says Mr McLean.

The firm will target standard surgical procedures initially but it has already considered other significant markets, such as: cosmetic surgery, orthopaedic surgery, and minor surgical procedures for general practice.

In the future it may enable general practitioners to undertake minor surgery, says Mr McLean.

The company is working with Shina Will, a leading European production company that recently completed the You're a Star programme for RTÉ, to capture the procedures on DVD.

The firm will shoot each operation from different angles to include interactive features on the DVD.

"DVD is a great medium for the surgical broadcasts because you can slow it down and freeze frame it easily.

But, crucially, you can also have multiviewing on the one television screen.

"This is one of the key features which surgeons are shouting about. It will enable them to view an operation from three separate angles at once and enable them to focus closely on one screen when they need to," says Mr McLean. He believes there would not be enough bandwidth available to offer it on the Web.

Reality Surgery plans to deliver one DVD and an accompanying booklet per month to each subscriber. Under the guidance of a surgical advisory board, procedures would be chosen in advance for inclusion in an issue.

The booklet would contain back-up material on the surgical procedures involved together with profiles of the State's leading surgeons and the latest clinical reviews and procedures.

The company's business plan proposes including three surgical procedures on each DVD to create an archive of 36 procedures within the first year of operation. A monthly subscription for an individual surgeon would cost about €62.50 but institutions such as hospital or libraries could pay larger fees for multiple copies of the DVD journal.

The target market for the product in the first three years is the estimated 120,000 general surgeons in the US and Europe, who tend to undergo similar training and speak English.

Later, the firm will consider expanding to Japan, India and the rest of the world.

By adopting a subscription approach, Reality Surgery should be able to focus on building new clients while maintaining a steady base. "We think we can attract about 8,000 subscribers a year," says Mr Goodey, majority shareholder with 60 per cent of the firm's equity.

"This is a 'first in the world' project and we have managed to secure the top 20 surgeons in the world to join our editorial board at the firm... People will want to learn from the best," he says.

Reality Surgery has managed to persuade some of the top surgeons in the world, including the US cancer specialist Dr Murray F Brennan, to join its advisory board.

It will now try to persuade them to visit Dublin to perform some procedures under the digital camera.

"We will pay them expenses to come to Dublin and perform an operation or, in some cases, we will have to go abroad to capture a procedure for a DVD," says Mr Goodey, who believes many of the advisory board have agreed to take part in the project because "everyone wants to be the best in the world".

Reality Surgery is in discussions with an Irish training hospitals about setting up its equipment in an operating theatre to record procedures.

It has created a pilot DVD and plans to go into full production shortly when it secures funding.

Mr Goodey is confident about creating a commercial success story but he believes the DVDs will help promote better surgical training and, ultimately, practice.

"If you consider that one surgeon has a success rate in a particular procedure of 95 per cent and another has an average of 97 per cent, there is a reason for that. By studying techniques used by the best surgeons, you should save lives in the long run."