A Formal Approach For Modelling And Analysing Surgical Procedures

Surgicalproceduresareoftennot“standardised”(i.e.,defined in a unique and unambiguous way), but rather exist as implicit knowledge in the minds of the surgeon and the surgical team. This reliance extends to pre-surgery planning and effective communication during the procedure. We introduce a novel approach for the formal and automated analysis of surgical procedures, leveraging established techniques developed for the analysis of security ceremonies. Our approach allows us to model as mutations the variants of a procedure and the mistakes that members of the surgical team might make, and to automatically identify violations of the intended properties of a procedure.