ISSiS EXECUTIVE, 2008-2010
The International Society for Simulation Surgery (ISSiS) was officially formed with the inaugural meeting of the society in Tokyo, Japan, December 9th to 11th, 1992. Further details of the meeting can be seen in the Historical Perspective section of the ISSiS website. The meeting was held under the main theme of “New horizons for computers and surgeons”, thus encouraging the major concept behind the founding of the society, whereby both computer science and technical surgical skills should work in combination to achieve the best possible result for the patient.
The subsequent drift away from the latter aspect, the simulative skills of the plastic surgeon, in favour of the technological side of computer science was not in focus with the main aim of the society as envisaged by the founding President, Toyomi Fujino MD FACS, a Professor Emeritus of KeioUniversity in Tokyo, Japan. For more discussion and background on this, please see HERE.
Computer technology is a good servant, but a bad master. Thus the ISSiS is reborn in its original image, whereby the simulative skills of the surgeon can be enhanced by computer technology: without the former, however, the latter has little meaning in the clinical setting. Computer technology will certainly help a surgeon to simulate tissue better, and possibly turn a good surgeon into a better one, but it will not help a bad surgeon become a good one.
The four main aims of the ISSiS can be summed up as follows:
1: To provide a pan-speciality forum for all surgeons working in any field where computer technology is being used to help simulate patient pathologies and surgical procedures, thereby assisting the surgeon in his or her simulation of hard or soft tissue and fine-tuning surgical procedures.
2: To help guide advances in computer technology, and to make sure that the technology thus developed is applied most fruitfully to achieve aim number 1.
3: To generate an intellectual bridge whereby computer specialists can communicate with interested clinicians, and vice versa, so that each side can help the other to gain a mutual understanding of the problems to be solved, and how to use their peculiar skills to help solve them.
4: To encourage the provision of a body of good simulation programs for the education of medical students, based on the vast store of practical and expert surgical knowledge. This will allow consistently reproducible simulations of both patient pathology and the surgical procedures to cure and correct it.