Team Consulting
Solving real surgical challenges relies on effective collaboration between surgeons and device developers. Over the past year, we have collaborated with the Royal College of Surgeons of England Innovation Hub (i-Hub), bringing together NHS surgeons and Team’s medical technology experts to address critical challenges in surgical practice.
“I think it’s really important to have collaboration between the Royal College of Surgeons Innovation Hub and our partners, such as Team Consulting, because if you’re really going to tackle problems, there’s no point in doing what you are already aware of. But, being able to bring the clinical perspective to the engineering and the engineering perspective to the clinical means you can start to think about the solutions to those big problems.”
“We believe the key to a successful surgical device development is to build on surgeons’ insight. Partnerships like this help to ensure we are designing devices which are not just technically feasible but also clinically. Working with the i-Hub team has been an absolute privilege.”
In June, we held an event in partnership with the RCS i-Hub team, introducing surgeons to the medical device innovation process and inviting them to share their biggest clinical challenges. One particularly pressing issue was submitted by Muhammad Shahzad, an NHS neurosurgeon, who mentioned how frequently surgeons need to switch instruments—sometimes up to 100 times during a single operation – during the removal of meningiomas. This constant switching breaks focus, prolongs procedures and increases time spent under anaesthesia. Recognising the importance of this challenge, Team and the i-Hub team invited Shahzad and his colleagues back for a workshop to brainstorm potential solutions.
Find out more about Muhammad Shahzad’s surgical challenge here:
“If you do innovative meetings like this, you take a step back and break the problem open, essentially. People came up with some very interesting opinions about how to approach this problem.
Even if you have a tiny problem which could be solved by a simple solution, bring it to the i-Hub team and the Team Consulting team because I think you would be surprised how interesting and innovative this problem solving experience can be.”
During our in-person event at the RCS England, led by the RCS i-Hub and Team Consulting, we collaborated with surgeons and industry experts to generate some possible solutions to Shahzad’s challenge.
The brainstorming session provided a wide range of ideas by breaking the problem down into its core components. Through collaborative efforts, Team, several neurosurgeons and the i-Hub team explored solutions ranging from novel electrosurgery instruments through to integrated AI and surgical navigation.
“We set up the event to try and really dig into a very specific clinical problem faced by members within the college… I think it is really important to bring in outside organisations, such as Team, because they are experienced in the facilitation of brainstorming and they bring a whole world of experience of pushing through innovative products in other areas.”
Helping surgeons take their ideas from concept to reality is something we are passionate about. Last year, we worked with three surgeons to tackle pressing surgical challenges, including improving laparoscopic surgery techniques, enhancing haemostat delivery and optimising interventional cardiac procedures.
We helped each of them create a prototype solution, all of which have since been progressed, with two of the surgeons founding their own start-ups.
Read each case study below:
Team has been working with clinical innovators to bring their ideas from concept to commercialisation for over 38 years. Read our surgical page to find out how we could help you.
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