Artificial intelligence in orthopaedics should be built with surgeons, not just for them!
Other text in scientific journal, 2026
Surgical artificial intelligence (AI) is typically validated on one patient population and then deployed unchanged into another, without surgeon input into its design. AI in orthopaedics should be built with surgeons, not simply for them: Surgeons should hold shared authority over the clinical question, data curation, validation, implementation, monitoring and retirement of any tool they use. Specialty-tuned models outperform general-purpose systems on some tasks, but the margin is modest and likely to narrow as generalist models improve. The more durable distinction is who controls the update loop-who can retrain a model on local outcomes, audit its failures and withdraw it when it drifts. Trial evidence shows that a clinician kept in that loop by design, not as an afterthought, outperforms working alone. What determines whether orthopaedic AI fulfils its promise is not model architecture, but who stays accountable to the surgeon at the bedside when the model needs to change.
Author
Felix C. Oettl
Balgrist University Hospital
Balint Zsidai
University of Gothenburg
Jacob Oeding
University of Gothenburg
Ting Cong
University of Pittsburgh
Elmar Herbst
FIFA Medical Centre of Excellence Austria
Gergely Panics
Semmelweis University
FIFA Medical Centre of Excellence (FMCE)
Philipp W. Winkler
University of Gothenburg
Volker Musahl
University of Pittsburgh
Eric Hamrin Senorski
University of Gothenburg
Romain Seil
Centre Hospitalier de Luxembourg
Christophe Ley
University of Luxembourg
Yinan Yu
University of Gothenburg
Chalmers, Computer Science and Engineering (Chalmers), Functional Programming
Thomas Tischer
Malteser Waldkrankenhaus Erlangen
University of Rostock
Stefano Zaffagnini
IRCCS Istituto Ortopedico Rizzoli, Bologna
Umile Giuseppe Longo
Fondazione Policlinico Universitario Campus Bio-Medico
Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma
Michael T. Hirschmann
University of Basel
Canton Hospital Basel-Land
Michael Hantes
University of Thessaly
Kristian Samuelsson
University of Gothenburg
Knee Surgery, Sports Traumatology, Arthroscopy
0942-2056 (ISSN) 1433-7347 (eISSN)
Vol. In PressSubject Categories (SSIF 2025)
Artificial Intelligence
Surgery
DOI
10.1002/ksa.70628
PubMed
42811872