The winners were announced at the Vattikuti Foundation KS International Innovation Awards 2023 with robotic surgeons from 10 specialties and featured in the accompanying academic symposium, Humans at the Cutting Edge of Robotic Surgery, held from October 6-8, 2023, in Ghent, Belgium with over 150 attendees.

Dr Mahendra Bhandari, CEO, Vattikuti Foundation, presented the top award at a special event honouring Dr Adeel Khan.

Dr Khan and his team were celebrated by several eminent surgeons from the School of Medicine, including Dr John Olson Jr., the William K. Bixby Professor and chair of the Department of Surgery; Chief Medical Officer of Washington University Physicians Dr Sam Bhayani; and Dr William Chapman, section chief of abdominal transplant surgery.

Dr Adeel Khan’s entry described the pioneering Robot-assisted Liver Transplant (RLT) in the USA using a deceased donor procedure that he and his team performed at the School of Medicine in May 2023. The submission of this procedure is expected to be of immense value to robotic surgeons as well as the field of transplantation surgery using the power of advanced technology.

Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis joins the ranks of institutions in South Korea and India with published and verbal reports of successful deceased liver donor robotic transplant surgery.

The Vattikuti Foundation award recognizes surgical talent and shares new, cutting-edge educational robotic surgery techniques with surgeons wanting to be on the Cutting Edge of Robotic Surgery with pioneers such as Dr Khan.

A high-profile jury comprising of Dr David Neal, Professor Emeritus, University of Cambridge and Oxford, Cambridge, UK; Dr Rajeev Kumar, Professor of Urology and Associate Dean (Academics), AIIMS, New Delhi; and Dr Sherry M Wren, Professor of Surgery, Stanford University, USA chose the top 3 from among the 141 submissions from surgeons in 14 countries that went through four rounds of judging.

“By focusing on robotic technology and surgeon education, the Vattikuti Foundation has proven the transformative power of innovative technology in revitalizing patients’ health at the hands of inventive humans,” said Raj and Padma Vattikuti, who founded the Vattikuti Foundation to leverage the untapped and unimagined technology potential to create new procedures, reduce cost of surgeries and improve patient outcomes 25 years ago.

Congratulating Dr Adeel Khan and his team Dr Mahendra Bhandari, CEO, Vattikuti Foundation said that evidence-based outcomes are paramount to improving patient care. The Foundation launched its multi-institutional perspective database - The Vattikuti Collective Quality Initiative (VCQI), in 2015 and is now in the process of introducing AI features to make the data more meaningful. This international database already stores over 20,000 high quality records of various robotic surgical procedures with contributions from 29 institutions.

The annual competition is held in memory of Krishnaswamy Subrahmaniam remembered as “KS”. He is known as an extraordinary human at the cutting edge for his outstanding contribution to the establishment and progress of robotic surgery in India. KS is remembered for the impact he made through efforts to expand robotic surgery programs in India and beyond.

The entry of Dr Ahmed Ghazi, Director of Minimal Invasive and Robotic Surgery and Director of Simulation Training at Johns Hopkins University, USA was adjudged second place for devising a novel patient specific simulation platform before complex robotic renal cancer surgeries. This approach can serve as a roadmap for other complex robotic surgeries.

Third place was awarded to Dr Sandeep Nayak from MACS Clinic and Fortis Cancer Institute, Bengaluru for devising a novel approach for removal of thyroid tumours using minimally invasive robotic surgery. Dr Nayak presented results of over 50 surgeries conducted over five years using this method with better patient outcomes and negligible scarring. Dr Nayak has performed another 50 procedures since submission.

The top ten was rounded out by entries from the US, India, and Europe: Dr Erica Stockwell, AdventHealth; Dr Jihad Kaouk, Cleveland Clinic; Drs Sierra J Seaman and Arnold P Advincula, Columbia University Irving Medical, all from USA; Dr Somashekhar SP, Aster Hospitals, Bengaluru and Dr Aditya Kulkarni, Ruby Hall Clinic, Pune; Dr Pieter De Backer and team of Jasper Hofman, Dr Alex Mottrie, and Dr Jente Simoens from the Orsi Academy in Belgium.