Proximie: Lebanon’s Modern Medical Miracle

In 2016, a modern medical miracle took place. In Gaza, a young man who had been badly hurt in a bomb blast underwent reconstructive surgery on his hand. 

What was remarkable about this procedure was that the surgeon at the Al Awda hospital who performed it, Dr. Hafez Abu Khousa, was guided by Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sitta, Head of Plastic Surgery at the American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC).

Dr. Abu-Sitta was not present in the operating room in Gaza to oversee the procedure. In fact, throughout the operation, he was over 300 miles away in his office in Beirut, conducting proceedings on an iPad.

 That operation was the first example of remote surgery carried out using the Proximie app - an Augmented Reality (AR) telemedical tool which allows surgeons to collaborate and share expertise over distance.

 We’re also seeing the use of this technology at a global scale, and one of the most heartwarming stories is from the town of Trujillo in the north of Lima in Peru, where this technology was used to support the provision of cleft lip and palate surgery to children, children from poor backgrounds who didn’t have access to health insurance. And in this town, there was a hospital with one surgeon working hard to provide this care. Dr. Soraya was struggling under the sheer demand of her local population. Moreover, she wasn’t specifically trained in this procedure. And so, with the help of a charity, we were able to connect her with a cleft surgeon in California who, using this technology, was able to guide and train her and her colleagues step by step through the procedure. Within a few months, they were able to perform 30 percent more operations with less and less complications. And now Dr. Soraya and her team can perform these operations independently, competently and confidently. And I remember one quote from a mother who said, “This technology gave my daughter her smile.”