Don’t follow the dollars, follow the data
The future of surgery should not and will not be written by technologists alone. It must be co-authored by us surgeons. To all my colleagues, I would say, don’t just be a user of the future; be an architect of it.’
These were the words of Dr Zubin Daruwalla, a former orthopaedic surgeon whose career path has been an interesting one. After training in his speciality, he left full-time clinical practice, frustrated with the system, to join PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to oversee the Asia Pacific Health Industries practice and the global health leadership team. He now enjoys what he calls a hybrid career.
A doctorpreneur, surgeon and futurist, he was among the guest speakers who shared insights with delegates recently at The Surgeon Show.
With extensive experience across clinical practice, digital health, and innovation, he reflected on his experience spanning Asia and the US, examining how diverse health systems, cultures, and expectations shape clinical practice and professional development.
Speaking with the Show’s media partner, Future Medicine, following his well-received session, Zubin said that bringing together surgeons was ‘extremely valuable’.
‘We share the same mindset. We get to see what is happening in the surgical field, so I think bringing the community together has been absolutely fantastic. I am loving hearing about the cultural experiences of people from around the world, and about what different systems are doing, because we can learn from them.’
His buzzword for surgeons was ’glocalise’: learn globally, then adapt locally.
A decade ago, with shifting career goals, Zubin felt frustrated. Returning to Singapore after practising in the UK was challenging; the country’s postgraduate medical education, including surgical training, had been overhauled, replacing the British-style system and requiring him to retrain.
Yet, his primary motivation was to have a bigger impact on just the patient in front of him; he wanted to affect populations and healthcare systems.
At PwC, he helped hospitals in Asia with electronic medical records, amalgamated entities into an academic medical centre, worked on financing, and also set up biotech cities in the Middle East and residency programmes worldwide.
It offered him breadth and depth – not just one patient at a time.
Consequently, he suggested that if you silo yourself solely as a surgeon, you may miss out on additional opportunities to do more.
In medicine, specifically in surgery, you don’t realise that to become good at what you do, you go into a speciality and do more and more of the same thing, but the problem is you become so narrow you cannot do anything else, he observed.
Surgery, he felt, does not allow for variety. Now, younger generations want more time for themselves and their families; they want to travel and work fewer hours.
Zubin said: ‘The onus is on us. We need to keep up with the demand. We have to evolve, and we have to adapt.’
One caveat is that, in healthcare, it’s a profession where the more you do, the better you get, so it’s a difficult balance to strike.
He asked: ‘How do we balance spending enough to gain the right experience to become competent in delivering care, while meeting these new expectations?’
A hybrid career seems to be the answer.
So, how does medical technology enhance and augment that?
‘Looking at it from the perspective of the patient journey, in any specialty, we start with awareness and education for the individual and the population about the disease, then move to prophylactics, e.g., vaccinations, then diagnostics, then therapeutics, then follow-up care,’ he explained.
‘Dividing up technologies, we look at software solutions, software as a medical device, hardware solutions, and then molecules (pharma, etc.). This forms a matrix in which technology cuts across the entire delivery of care.’
One final note of caution, ‘don’t get caught up with the hype,’ he added. ‘Don’t follow the dollars, follow the data. Be cautious in your approach,’ he warned.
With an impressive attendance of 656 C-suite surgeons from around the world, the UK’s pioneering Surgical Leaders Summit has cemented its place on the global surgical calendar.
Looking ahead, The Surgeon Show 2027 UK’s Exclusive Surgical Leaders Summit will take place at London’s Business Design Centre on Friday 19 January.
