Low-cost assessment tools for the development of psychomotor competency in procedural surgical skills

While didactic training is a crucial element of education in the health care profession, current technologies leveraging low cost data acquisition and processing may provide an attractive alternative means for rapid, objective assessment of the foundational skills. When these technologies are leveraged towards improving the procedural surgical skill set, there is a strong opportunity for enhancing current training practices. While the proctor will still play a crucial role in the refinement of clinical judgment, affordable options for rapid training of procedural skills may serve as an avenue to free an expert proctor to focus on the more nuanced elements of medical training. Here we propose and implement a system for the low cost assessment and training of procedural surgical skills. A knot-tying module and a tool articulation module were created using affordable sensing technologies, and initial validation with a trained clinician showed that the devices could discriminate correctly and poorly tied knots. The system lays the framework for a modular experiential component of skills development in the training of health professionals.