• Understand how the NHS can transform surgical services to increase capacity, improve productivity and reduce waiting times
• Explore the innovation, technology and new models of care that will shape the future delivery of surgery
• Identify the leadership, workforce and system-wide changes needed to deliver sustainable improvements in surgical access, quality and patient outcomes

• Identify the main causes of unused theatre capacity, including late starts, cancellations, overrunning lists and inefficient turnaround
• Examine how theatre utilisation, cases per session and cancellation data can be used to identify improvement opportunities
• Explore practical approaches to list planning, patient scheduling, theatre flow and team coordination
• Understand how trusts can increase surgical activity within existing theatre capacity

John McGrath, Co-chair of the Robotic Surgery Steering Committee, NHS England

Ankur Mukherjee, Consultant Urological and Robotic Surgeon, Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust

This panel will bring together surgeons from different specialties to explore how technology is changing surgical practice, from robotic-assisted procedures and image-guided surgery to AI, digital planning and data-driven theatre management. Discussion will also consider the practical barriers to adoption, including capital investment, training, governance, workforce requirements and whether technology can genuinely contribute to NHS productivity.

• Understand how early risk assessment can identify patients who require optimisation before surgery
• Explore the role of prehabilitation, anaemia management, nutrition and management of comorbidities
• Examine how perioperative optimisation can reduce cancellations, complications and length of stay
• Consider how better preparation of patients can ultimately increase available surgical capacity

• Examine where delays and inefficiencies occur between referral, listing, surgery and discharge
• Explore how earlier assessment and better pathway coordination can reduce avoidable waiting
• Consider how enhanced recovery and earlier discharge can release beds and improve patient flow

• Examine how workforce shortages and theatre access are restricting surgical capacity
• Explore how trusts can increase productivity without compromising surgical training
• Consider how robotics, advanced practitioners and changing skill mixes could affect future surgical teams
• Identify approaches to improving recruitment, retention and training opportunities within pressured surgical services

• Examine the main sources of carbon emissions and waste across surgical pathways, theatres and perioperative care
• Explore how procurement, surgical equipment, anaesthesia, energy use and waste management can be addressed without compromising patient safety
• Identify practical approaches to reducing the environmental impact of operating theatres and surgical services

• Examine the major preventable conditions and risk factors contributing to demand for surgical services.
• Explore how earlier intervention, prevention and community-based care could reduce the need for complex surgical treatment.
• Consider the role of primary care, screening and population health programmes in reducing late presentation and surgical complications.
• Explore how surgical services can work with wider health systems to reduce future demand while improving patient outcomes.

As surgical demand continues to grow, increasing theatre capacity alone will not solve the pressure on services. This panel will explore how prevention, earlier diagnosis, primary and community care, health optimisation and alternative models of treatment could reduce the number of patients progressing to complex surgery or improve their condition before an operation becomes necessary.

The discussion will consider how surgical teams can work differently with primary care, community services and wider integrated care systems to intervene earlier and manage patients outside the traditional hospital pathway.