Challenge Partner:

In the months leading up to the announcement of the Global Surgical Training Challenge, MIT Solve’s team worked closely with the Intuitive Foundation and the team at Challenge Works to design a series of workshops for teams and individuals interested in applying for the Discovery Awards. They planned to hold a series of in-person Solveathons in key areas around the world, working with local innovators, clinicians and educators.

“We were going to start in March 2020 by visiting different urban centers in low- and middle-income countries to host the workshops,” says Patrick Diamond, MIT Solve’s lead on the Challenge. Of course, we all know what happened. “We had to move everything online because international travel became impossible.”

That led to the design and hosting of online Solveathons, which attracted hundreds of people from all over the world. During these sessions, participants met, took part in design thinking workshops and recruited team members. 

“The upside was that, by not holding the in-person Solveathons in urban centers where there is a bigger concentration of surgeons and other specialists, we were able to open the virtual sessions to a wider diversity of participants in terms of countries, technical expertise and surgical specialties. We were able to be more creative about who we brought in.” The result was the formation of teams with representation that spans the globe and multiple specialty areas. 

MIT Solve continues to support the Global Surgical Training Challenge with online workshops for the teams. The workshops are part of an ongoing mentoring programme in partnership with the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. In these workshops, the teams share learnings and engage in peer discussions.

Although they were competing to move into the finalist stage of the Global Surgical Training Challenge, the Discovery Award teams benefited from the ability to share experiences and advice. “At MIT Solve, we know there is a lot of power in peer learning, where fellow innovators doing similar work can learn from common challenges,” says Diamond. “There is a vast reservoir of resources and knowledge among the participants.”

MIT Solve has worked with foundations and organizations around the world on a variety of challenges but the work with the Global Surgical Training Challenge has been unique in two important ways, according to Diamond.

“Although the global surgery community is relatively compact and focused, the work they do has an outsized impact on the lives of people around the world. Finding ways to deliver effective and quality surgical care has enormous implications for millions of people.”

Secondly, the requirement to have the team leader be from a low or middle income country (LMIC) is unique. “In design thinking we often discuss having empathy with the end user,” says Diamond. “But when the leader of the team has lived experience with the challenges and problems they’re trying to solve, that adds a defining layer to their thinking and design. We consider this approach to be a best practice in user-centered design.”