Help Lightning

Remote expertise through the power of merged reality

Access to this ground-breaking technology is included at no cost with an InterSurgeon clinician membership. Help Lightning allows experienced surgeons to guide and interactively assist others during operations in real-time, anywhere in the world.

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What are the benefits of Help Lightning for surgeons?

In light of the pandemic, and for the foreseeable future, the conventional ways of establishing collaborative partnerships through physical visits are not going to be possible. However, because Help Lightning allows surgeons to collaborate remotely, partnerships can still develop – and more easily than ever before. Help Lightning can be used as a tool for education, mentorship and instruction – as well as for intraoperative case management. It allows both surgical planning and real-time intraoperative advice.

How does it work?

Watch this video to learn how Help Lightning works. This shows use cases in other industries – it’s every bit as useful with surgical applications and can also be used hands-free. All you need to use Help Lightning is your smartphone and an internet connection, though it can also be used with tablets, desktop computers and smart surgical glasses.

Download a beginner’s guide to Help Lightning here: Help Lightning Basic Training

Virtual help in real-time

Help Lightning uses Merged Reality to blend two real-time video streams – e.g. that of a remote surgical expert and another surgeon that needs help – into a collaborative environment. This Merged Reality allows the expert to virtually reach out and direct real surgical procedures or training.

Help Lightning

Use your existing devices

Help Lightning runs on your existing mobile devices (iOS, Android) or a web-browser on laptop and desktop computers.

Surgeons can now provide remote assistance as though they’re working side-by-side. They can telestrate, freeze images, use hand gestures, and even add real objects into the merged reality environment.

Help Lightning Software

Be there instantly

Help Lightning is easy, fast and intuitive.

Once you’re in a merged reality call with a colleague or customer, simply tap the mode to change how you interact. Choose whether you’re giving or receiving help, and start collaborating in seconds. Help Lightning’s unique Merged Reality can add missing visual cues, gestures, and non-verbal communication methods to any session.

Help Lightning
Help Lightning

Using Help Lightning with smart surgical glasses

Take Help Lightning to the next level by pairing it with smart glasses. This innovation allows the wearer to benefit from the assistance of AI or a third-party while performing surgery. When used in conjunction with Help Lightning, smart glasses mean that another surgeon can see exactly what you are seeing and what you’re doing – and also have their hands superimposed over your field of view.

There are a number of models available from different manufacturers including VUZIX, Zebra, and RealWear.

The Advantage of Remote Expertise

Studies show that adding gestures and nonverbal clues substantially improves the speed of understanding. Furthermore, nonverbal cues are 430% more effective than verbal cues and nonverbal cues make Help Lightning’s combination of verbal and nonverbal communication up to 10 times more effective.

Sources: Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, British Journal of Clinical Psychology

Join InterSurgeon today and use Help Lightning for free

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Specialty Registration

1Specialty/Subspecialties

Please select all that apply to you personally

This information will be used to validate your application

If you are representing a hospital department, please indicate that here. Otherwise choose 'Individual Surgeon'

2Contact information

Choose your preferred form of address from the list

Please enter your personal name (forename)

Please enter your family name (surname)

Please enter any suffixes you wish to appear after your name – e.g. MD, PhD, FACS

Please ensure that you use an active email address that will not expire or deactivate in the near future and check that it is correct before continuing. NB: It is not possible to change your username later, except by contacting InterSurgeon’s support team.

The name chosen here will be how you are addressed in email communications – it will only be seen by you

Please add all relevant names here. These will appear as a list on your member profile.

Social profiles

Please enter your LinkedIn Profile URL (please include the https:// part)

Please enter your Twitter username without the @ symbol

Please add the URL of your personal website here, if applicable (please include the https:// part)

3Location information

This will not be shown on your profile

For the section below, please answer the questions as they relate to the last hospital in which you held a substantive post or had admitting rights.

Where are you based?

The city in which you practice

The state, county or administrative zone in which you practice

Please choose a country from the list

Hospital Information

Please choose one of the options, relating to the hospital where you spend the majority of your time

FIRST-LEVEL HOSPITAL
General Surgical Services. Not specialised. Anaesthesia available

SECOND-LEVEL HOSPITAL (REGIONAL)
Limited Surgical Specialities and Equipment

THIRD-LEVEL HOSPITAL (REFERRAL)
Highly specialised hospital with appropriate trained staff and technical equipment to support the majority of surgical specialities

NATIONAL SPECIALIST HOSPITAL
National/Specialist hospitals such as Children’s, neurosurgical, heart, ophthalmological, orthopaedic providing both surgical and speciality system specific accompanying medical services

Please choose all that apply, relating to the hospital where you spend the majority of your time

Enter the name of this hospital

Please enter the name of your department if applicable

Please use the English language version of your hospital address as shown in Google Maps. Enter the first line of the address here.

Please use the English language version of your hospital address as shown in Google Maps. Enter the second line of the address here, if applicable.

Please use the English language version of your hospital address as shown in Google Maps. Enter the third line of the address here, if applicable.

Please enter the ZIP or postcode for this hospital

Please add the URL of your hospital or department website here

Date of enrolment

Expected date of qualification

Current or past partnerships and further information

4Further information

Do you (or your department) currently have partnerships with other hospitals in place, or have you had such partnerships in the past?

Scroll through this list and choose all that apply, one by one

Scroll through this list and choose all that apply, one by one

InterSurgeon works best when our members share this kind of information. Please write at least one paragraph in this space for each of the countries you have listed above. This should include information such as the names of hospitals, issues you encountered and levels of success.

Public display name

This is the display name that will be displayed on your profile and to all other InterSurgeon users and is separate from the Contact information you provided in Step 2. You can choose to appear as an individual (e.g. John Smith, MD) or as a hospital/department (e.g. Department of Neurosurgery, St Mary’s Hospital). You should not include your city or country in this name because that will appear beside your profile automatically.

Public display name

This is the display name that will be displayed on your profile and to all other InterSurgeon users and is separate from the Contact information you provided in Step 2. You should not include your city or country in this name because that will appear beside your profile automatically.

Please choose a name that describes who you are accurately and succinctly. Please avoid adding multiple suffixes.

Profile description

Add some information here about yourself and/or your hospital department. We recommend a few paragraphs that tell the world who you are, what you do and what you would like to get out of InterSurgeon. Are you attached to a University and involved in teaching and training? If so, please provide full details here.

Profile description

Add some information here about yourself and/or your medical school. We recommend a few paragraphs that tell the world who you are, what you do, and what you would like to get out of InterSurgeon.

This description will be displayed publicly on your profile page

Please select the languages that you (or your department) speak. Select all that apply.

Profile picture

Now please add a picture – this helps to personalise your profile. Add your photo in JPG or PNG format, with a file size no larger than 5MB. You will be able to crop it after uploading.

Referrals and affiliations

Attaching a referee to your account may mean that your account is approved sooner. Referees may be contacted by InterSurgeon to verify your relationship.

If you cannot find the InterSurgeon member you are looking for please select the 'No' option on the field above.

Click to search or start typing to find organisations. These will be listed on your profile.

Organisation alerts

Organisations sometimes look for specialists like you for overseas visits. You can opt-into receiving notifications from organisations in this way here. You can opt-out at any time too via the option on your profile page.

NGO alerts

Organisations sometimes look for students like you for overseas visits. You can opt-into receiving notifications from organisations in this way here. You can opt-out at any time too via the option on your profile page.

Clicking Yes here means that you will receive email notifications from NGOs looking for specialists like you. You can change this setting later by editing your profile.

Help Lightning

Remote expertise through the power of merged reality

Access to this ground-breaking technology is included at no cost with your InterSurgeon membership

Help Lightning allows experienced surgeons to guide and interactively assist others during operations in real-time, anywhere in the world

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Terms and Conditions must be accepted

Code of Practice

All Members of InterSurgeon agree to abide by the principles set down in the Declaration of Geneva as adopted by the 2nd General Assembly of the World Medical Association in 1948 and subsequently amended and revised, most recently in 2017.

All members of InterSurgeon shall follow the Core Humanitarian Standard on Quality and Accountability.

Specifically, members of InterSurgeon should:

  • At all times practice their profession with conscience and dignity
  • Place the health and well-being of their patient above all other considerations
  • Respect and Maintain Patient Confidentiality
  • Respect colleagues and co-workers
  • Provide care to any patient irrespective of age, disease or disability, creed, race, ethnic origin, gender, nationality, political affiliation, sexual orientation, social standing or any other factor
  • Agree not to use medical knowledge to violate human rights or civil liberties even under threat
  • Maintain the utmost respect for human life

Humanitarian aid should:

  • Be appropriate and responsive to the needs of the recipients
  • Be in response to a local request and in close collaboration with local medical and where appropriate, government agencies
  • Be designed to strengthen the knowledge and effectiveness of the local team
  • Incorporate aspects of teaching and training to local medical staff and allied health professionals and be planned as part of a long term collaborative partnership
  • Based upon a knowledge of the local political and economic situation such that no member of the team should be placed unawares in a position of risk
  • Based upon frank and open communication on both sides so that feedback and complaints should be encouraged and treated with respect, openness and dealt with in a timely fashion
  • Take place in an environment of continuous medical education and improvement
  • Use available resources in the most efficient and effective way

Effective Collaborative Partnerships for the delivery of surgical care should include:

  • Preliminary discussions on aims and intentions of the partnership with the inclusion of assessable goals and outcomes
  • Initial site visits to assess local physical infrastructure and manpower resources, with any deficiencies addressed prior to surgeries taking place
  • Clear agreement on essential resources necessary for delivery of safe surgical care in the pre, peri and post-operative period
  • Briefing of both parties on relevant social and cultural issues that are likely to affect a successful working relationship
  • Audit of surgical outcomes to include morbidity and mortality and benchmarking of these and of functional outcome from surgery; outcomes should be published with the local team maintaining ownership of the data and intellectual property
  • Informed consent to patients and/or their families or carers with written and verbal information provided in the appropriate language or dialect with the use of translators where necessary
  • The adoption of the WHO Surgical Checklist to encourage good and clear communication within the surgical team; no surgical procedure taking place if any essential factor is absent
  • The delivery of surgical intervention only by an appropriately trained surgeon or, in respect to those in training, under the close supervision of an appropriately trained surgeon
  • The delivery of anaesthetic and nursing care should be by appropriately trained staff
  • Close supervision of visiting trainees with preference always given to the teaching of local rather than visiting trainees
  • Careful and ethical management of any financial transactions between visiting surgeons, host and patient
  • Sustainable delivery of disposable items and donation of equipment with clear strategy for its servicing, repair and maintenance
  • Use of local reusable items and resources where appropriate
  • Planned delivery of clinical care, education and training in a long term and sustainable fashion
    Engagement, where appropriate, with local administrative or governmental bodies to improve and develop facilities and manpower and contribute to the development of National Surgical Plans

Code of practice for those making requests from students

InterSurgeon members making requests from students are expected to agree to the following code of practice:

  • Students shall be treated with respect at all times.
  • The physical and mental wellbeing of the student must be a priority.
  • The student must have an identified mentor at both their home institution and the hospital that they are visiting, to whom they can refer.
  • The student must be supervised in the clinical setting with patient confidentiality being respected and maintained.
  • Visiting students should not be provided with opportunities at the expense of local students.
  • The student should never be asked to perform any aspect of clinical duties with which he or she is uncomfortable.
  • The student must feel free to voice concerns if they feel what is expected of them is outside their capability and/or level of training.
  • When the student is asked to perform research their work and input to any resultant publication must be acknowledged.
  • A meeting should take place between student and mentor at the start of the attachment to discuss aspects of the service the student is joining, the role that they will be fulfilling and any local ethical or cultural matters relevant to the students’ stay. A further meeting should occur mid-term to discuss progress and any issues that have arisen and finally a meeting should take place at the end of the stay to summarise and evaluate. It is recommended that brief notes should be taken and signed by mentor and student.

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Code of Practice must be accepted

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