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Connecting a billion minds | Shafi Ahmed | TEDxGoodenoughCollege


one two three four five once I caught a
fish alive six seven eight nine ten then
I think go again why did you let it go
because it bit my finger so which finger
did it bite is the finger on my right
those are the famous words from an
English Nursery Rhyme depicting
numerical order and anatomical
orientation but to me that’s my first
learning experience as a child
psychologists have told us in the first
four years of life we have redditor
memories but that’s my earliest memory I
can remember Linux bills are very
important in cultivating your future
lives my mother this is our house in
Bangladesh where I was born and nurtured
the mother used to teach her young
children she taught them basic English
the fundamentals of learning a new
language by sharing her knowledge she
empowered these children she empowered
them and filled their minds with
aspiration so my thoughts to you is what
was your first memory
can you remember not yourself our facts
information skills acquired by a mixture
of experience and education they are
concrete usually remember them also
they’re quite practical they help us in
the world that we live in today learning
yourself requires prior knowledge
knowledge base becomes the scaffold for
future construction of learning I would
suspect that everyone this room would
agree with the following statement
education is a fundamental human right
for everybody in the world I’m sure we
will agree with that I’m sure everyone
the audience also agrees the fallacy of
that statement because education isn’t
free it’s not for all it ends on two
things
ends on location
and results so my question to you all is
how to change the paradigm of low
education so that we all share knowledge
to the many people as possible we have
to think outside the box we have to
think about teaching many people and
showing a legacy long after we’ve passed
the earth as a surgeon as a trainer as a
teacher I assume while I think about how
do I get the best out of my students
this picture comes to mind is the
picture showing teaching in the
operating theatre it’s called a theater
for reason you’re unsure we haven’t
changed this were learning not for
decades probably for centuries we’ll
accept you the dogma and tradition of
health care for a long time without
challenging it microchip Corps says if
we don’t challenge the government
tradition of health care and training we
accept my definition mediocrity
therefore if you look at this picture it
shows people the surgeon center of
attention and as a surgeon that’s what I
want to be like I want to be their main
person everyone was surrounding sadly it
never happened however if you look at
learning example it’s not great the
person in back of the room is trying to
peer over many shoulders and being
taught by someone center of stage he’s
learning by osmosis and diffusion this
is not active learning as passive early
it’s terrible but we’ve accepted this
for many years now a challenge the idea
medical students around the world was a
class picture understand medic students
would come to my theater for the song
but often you see them we have five six
at a time we’ll sit the back of the room
we have operation that go on for all day
eight nine ten hours a day in that room
at the back so what they’re doing on
their smartphones on social media on
Instagram on Facebook on snapchat on
Twitter the learning itself needs to
change they’re more part of that whole
equation we have a global problem about
two years ago The Lancet Commission
produced its report on global surgery
the first time is been quantified in the
world
it’s estimated that five billion people
that’s two-thirds the population do not
have access to safe and affordable
surgery to overcome the some of this and
make health care more equitable we need
Train 2 million surgeons today just so
they get the right sort of treatment
that we take for granted here sitting
here in this audience we need to create
the resource to perform 115 million
operations per year to make that
equitable so my question to you is how
do we overcome this the world is
becoming connected they’re helping us a
blip your big global companies and now
creating balloons into the cloud they’re
putting drones into the air and bring
tables under the sea to help us create
high-speed Wi-Fi access the unquenchable
thirst for the internet connections is
now hopefully being solved in the next
five or ten years imagine you’re a
surgeon in Tanzania that man this
picture you have aspiration to the best
surgeon that you can be you want to
improve the standards of your local
rural population
we can’t leave because of resource and
geography if every right to offer your
patients the very best treatment using
what those knowledge is then two years
ago I decided to livestream operation
using Google glass simple wearable
technology Spitzer is like smartphone on
your head with one click you can stream
live across the globe also what we did
on that day will allow the Google glass
to be projected around the globe and
students around the globe could actually
watch the operation through my eyes
points of view approved text messages
which would then come onto my glass I
could talk to that same time mounts them
on that day
I trained 14,000 people across the globe
in 118 countries just showing you a
power of simple connectivity simple
wearable device can change the lives of
many people
weduc eight many it’s not at one to one
not wanted to think about one to many
think actually that knowledge that many
people as possible
I’ve impact in life virtuality is
discussed already a year ago I was I
performed the world’s first operation
using virtual reality technology we talk
about television what about earlier
that’s about telemedicine
it’s about remote teaching the person in
Tanzania is still there and connecting
why the net what about if we bring them
to you into your operating theatre be
close to you they can learn from you in
a different way
virtually so last year we use a a camera
rig Faliszek the camera rig we record a
live operation which we sent out to the
world people around the world can access
the feed using essentially a smartphone
which is ubiquitous around the world a
free app and a Google cardboard headset
goo carbon headset costs $5 suddenly
high fidelity low cost seems a way we
can penetrate those markets our
operations watched by 55,000 people in
140 countries and 4,000 cities I can’t
name them 4,000 cities if they’re tried
but clearly the interest around the
world was unique it’s about connecting a
human mind I have a confession to make I
have an addiction or some would call
affliction to social media I think we
will share some of those afflictions
social medias interesting I look at
social media it complete different like
so I think it’s about empowering people
because it connects huge amounts of
people around the globe let’s think
about it if Facebook gives you all the
time it’s got 2 billion active users 2/3
of the population
instagram has 300 million users on a
daily basis twitter again 300 users
snapchat
and 50 million users so what about
social media a different way
have empowered people with social media
only the shade this in January I was in
Bangladesh doing some operations on some
patients for what they do flown
tropically I thought let’s connect me
for the Facebook live one click on
Facebook live suddenly I was trading
10,000 surgeons or communicating one
clip of Facebook live first time we’ve
got a live operation in that way why not
because it’s there it’s free already if
people to learn in that manner what
about Twitter about two or three months
ago I was given the honor to curate the
app and a chess account yes I ran the
account the whole night NHS I tweets
about my life in surgeon that my family
but when I do for a living
also I thought I might treat an
operation you have an opportunity why
not then they drew sounds right so I
actually tweeted the world’s life first
live operation using tweets of 140
characters or less using videos and
images it went viral
what operation was followed by 1 million
people in the UK and we’re trying to
demystify the process of operations of
surgery and medicine as a whole you’ll
understand that we need to be open and
transparent on what we do why not use
social media in that regard
what about snapchat interesting snapchat
it’s the most powerful of mental as a
platform at the moment but don’t realise
it’s really powerful it has those
filters right and actually you think
about the usage of snapchat 75 percent
of those 100 million users to the ages
of 17 and 25 the same age my medical
students same age my trainees they
understand different way of learning so
in November I form the world’s first
snapped operation across the globe what
we did I use the spectacles they just
come out and I you could click on the
button it records ten-second Clips so I
thought can I train people in ten-second
bites
condense it make it relevant I think
about strategy of teaching so we did
that and ear went viral in 24 hours it
had 100,000 downloads on YouTube
is watched by 2 million people within a
month it in retweeted tweet it or
favorited by 54 million people so it
showed you the power of collecting
people using platforms is far reaching
or perhaps away we can do better let’s
take it further this is of course the
ultimate selfie I know you’re thinking
you see we’ve talked about remote
teaching using Google glass we’ll talk
about virtual reality bring people
towards you what about if you could
transport yourself laugh about the globe
using teleportation holla portation
so we captured my avatar they call me
the virtual surgeon I really did become
virtual surgeon two months ago with this
image because we can create photo real
images with whadya volumetric depth we
can then place that and hopefully
transported so I partly glow these 104
cameras each camera has a resolution of
36 megapixels so you can recreate a
human being what about if you had
artists intelligence into the face they
speak to people suddenly you can
transport yourself into another world
and actually remote and be there
teaching training people it’s by being
in London let’s go the next solution for
us to help a billion people in this
world we need to connect a million minds
thank you
you
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