A major new commitment of the IRPS, the Surgery Education Center, based in a newly renovated 3000 square foot space at Bellevue Hospital, has been designed from the ground up to be at the forefront in virtual surgery education and development.

Founded on the converging trends of increasing public interest in patient safety and the ever increasing power of computers, virtual surgery had an early start at NYU with the development of the internationally distributed Cleft Lip and Palate animations developed by Dr. Court Cutting’s laboratory.

The experiences gained from this pioneering groundwork have been incorporated into the Education Center which focuses on the concurrent development of surgical animations, surgical simulations, cognitive/scenario simulations, and a virtual surgery atlas. Additionally, validated outcomes measures are designed into these projects to allow for continual reappraisal of their effectiveness, refinement of the coding algorithms, and publishable research activity. All disciplines within plastic surgery are included.

Finally, it is our vision that the center will not only figure centrally in the education of future generation of plastic surgeons but also play a defining role in the evolution of the nascent field of computer based medical illustration, animation, and simulation.