Our Autonomous Healthcare Expert Team
T1. Clinical Domain Experts (The "Teachers" & Supervisors)
Lead: Dr. June Lee, MD, PhD, Executive Deputy Director and Chief Medical Officer (CMO)
Email: JLee@nsmsusa.org
These experts define the "ground truth." They provide the medical knowledge, surgical techniques, and decision-making logic that the AI must learn.
● Surgical Specialists:
○ Neurosurgeons: Crucial for high-precision, microsurgical tasks (e.g., tumor removal, aneurysms) where the margin for error is sub-millimeter.
○ Cardiothoracic Surgeons: Essential for autonomous systems addressing moving targets (beating hearts) and complex vascular reconstruction.
○ Orthopedic Surgeons: Needed for robotic bone handling, drilling, and implant alignment (already a mature field in robotics).
○ Interventional Radiologists: Experts in image-guided, minimally invasive procedures. Key for teaching robotic navigation via catheters and needles.
○ Trauma Surgeons: Vital for designing systems that can handle "unstructured" emergencies where speed and adaptability are critical.
● Medical Treatment Specialists:
○ Clinical Pharmacologists: Essential for defining autonomous drug delivery algorithms, managing drug-drug interactions, and pharmacokinetics (how the body processes drugs in real-time).
○ Anesthesiologists: Required to automate sedation levels, pain management, and vital sign monitoring during autonomous procedures.
○ Intensivists (ICU Doctors): For designing systems that autonomously manage life support, ventilators, and fluid resuscitation.
Our Autonomous Healthcare Expert Team
T2. Technical & Robotics Engineering (The "Builders")
Lead: Dr. Emily Brown, PhD, Director and Chief Engineer
Email: EBrown@nsmsusa.org
These experts build the physical hardware that interacts with the patient.
● Mechatronics Engineers: Design the robotic arms, end-effectors (tools), and actuators that mimic or exceed human dexterity.
● Haptics Engineers: Specialists in "touch" technology. They enable the robot to "feel" tissue density, identifying the difference between a nerve, a vein, and a tumor.
● Bio-MEMS Engineers: (Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems) Create microscopic robots or sensors (like "smart dust" or nanobots) for internal treatments.
● Soft Robotics Engineers: Focus on making robots out of compliant materials that are safer for human contact and can navigate delicate tissue without damaging it..
Our Autonomous Healthcare Expert Team
T3. AI & Computational Experts (The "Brains")
Lead: Dr. June Lee, MD, PhD, Executive Deputy Director and Chief Healthcare AI Architect
Email: JLee@nsmsusa.org
These experts build the software that perceives the environment and makes decisions.
● Computer Vision Specialists: Build the eyes of the system. They train models to segment anatomy (e.g., "this pixel is liver, this pixel is an artery") from camera feeds, MRI, or CT data.
● Deep Reinforcement Learning (RL) Experts: Train agents to make sequences of decisions (e.g., the best path to cut) by simulating millions of surgeries.
● Medical Data Scientists: Clean and annotate the massive datasets required to train the AI (scrubbing noisy hospital data).
● Sim-to-Real Engineers: Specialize in ensuring that what a robot learns in a physics simulator (virtual world) translates accurately to the messy reality of a human body.
Our Autonomous Healthcare Expert Team
T4. Regulatory, Safety & Ethics (The "Guardrails")
Lead: Dr. Christopher Johnson, PhD, Chief Regulatory Affairs Officer
Email: CJohnson@nsmsusa.org
Autonomous healthcare faces extreme scrutiny; these roles ensure the technology is legal, safe, and accepted.
● Bioethicists: Address the moral dilemmas of autonomous care (e.g., "Who is responsible if the robot makes a mistake?").
● Regulatory Affairs Specialists (FDA/EMA): Experts in the specific pathways for "Software as a Medical Device" (SaMD) and autonomous surgical robotics approval.
● Medical Cybersecurity Experts: Protect the system from being hacked. (A hacked autonomous surgeon is a lethal weapon).
● Human Factors Engineers: Design the interface between the human oversight team and the autonomous robot to prevent "automation bias" (where humans trust the robot too much and stop paying attention).
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NSMS Workshop Series: The Era of Autonomous Healthcare
Since our founding in 1996, the National Society of Medical Scientists (NSMS) has been dedicated to providing objective, expert counsel on the most critical issues in science and technology. There is perhaps no issue more critical today than the safe and effective integration of autonomy into medical practice.
This workshop brings together leading experts to rigorously evaluate the technologies driving this shift. From autonomous mobile hospitals to bio-responsive wearable systems, we are here to assess the science, debate the ethics, and define the standards that will govern the next generation of patient care.
Welcome to a day of rigorous inquiry and scientific advancement.