8.10 Congress news

8.10 Congress news

AO joins forces with Davos Digital Forum: streaming live on January 28, 2021

The Davos Digital Forum Partners Health Edition was streaming live from the AO headquarters in Davos on January 28, for a special edition that focused on health. Thought leaders and major business figures from around the world came together at the event to address the most important challenges the sector faces today. More than 1000 participants registered for the Davos Digital Forum – Health Edition. AO President Elect Florian Gebhard's keynote speech titled 'The Future of Surgery' outlined the major recent advances seen in digital technology: surgeons, medical professionals, hospitals, and patients. Florian Gebhard asked how surgery has changed in the past 170 years since anesthesia was developed, and how much about it has stayed the same. His talk covered the partnership between patients and clinicians on the threshold of digital revolution: looking at robot-assisted surgery, genome testing, 3D bioprinting, AI, AR, and VR. Prof R Geoff Richards, Executive Director Research and Development at the AO, and Manuela Ernst, Project Leader at the ARI gave a talk titled Digitized Aftercare in Orthopedics, assessing the potential ways of integrating technological developments into surgical aftercare. Their main example of this was the novel implant system developed by ARI to provide continuous, objective, data on healing status.

AO’s Richards and Topalovic support charity’s effort to keep students inspired

Each January for the past two years, the charity UK Education and Employers has organized an event for WEF annual meeting participants to visit Davos-area schools and raise students’ awareness about the many career paths available to them. With the postponement of the 2021 WEF meeting, the charity didn’t want young people to miss a chance to be inspired so – in partnership with the Geneva based Swiss charity MOD-ELLE and with support from Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) – it organized four virtual “Inspiring the Future” sessions over three days. The online events brought students together with inspiring professionals, including ARI Director Prof Geoff Richards and AO Senior Program Manager Diversity, Inclusion and Mentorship Tatjana Topalovic. In a January 27 session, students met and talked with Snapchat CEO and cofounder Evan Spiegel, and during the January 28 event, primary school students in three different Davos classrooms joined an interactive, virtual “Primary Futures” session in German, featuring multilingual volunteers answering questions and discussing their careers. On January 29, students in Klosters interacted with a panel that included Richards and representatives of the WEF, Roche Diagnostics, and Payflow Digital. The same day, students in Davos heard from a diverse international panel that included Topalovic, the town’s mayor, representatives of the OECD, business, industry, and education.

Students in Klosters Follow your dreams: Richards relished the opportunity to encourage the young participants.