Underwood Center for

Digestive Health

In September, Professor Sir Pali Hungin, MD, delivered the 2024 Underwood Presidential Lecture: “The Changing Face of Medicine: Visualizing the Future” on the future of medicine and the role of the physician. Dr. Hungin shared his career experience as a primary care physician and academic in the northeast of the UK. In his wide-ranging and highly relevant lecture, he touched upon several areas where doctors will be challenged via the impact of social media, the benefits and pitfalls of the EMR, and our possible replacement by AI. I urge you to listen to his lecture in its entirety, which has been archived here. In the end, I had to ask myself: what will the Underwood Center look like in years to come and are we prepared for these challenges? It’s a lot to think about. I believe that, whether by design or happenstance, we are in pretty good shape. Thanks to COVID, hybrid or all-virtual conferences and meetings are the new normal and have increased attendance at many of our clinical and educational events. The Friday Multidisciplinary GI Conference, our Annual Underwood Symposium and Professor Sir Hungin’s lecture all illustrate enhanced audience participation thanks to the availability of streaming. These platforms are especially valuable in a center as geographically dispersed as ours. We continue to participate in virtual consultations with our patients and, while the future of this approach lies in the hands of those who pay the bills, there is no doubt that it can play a valuable role in patient care. Ongoing work on uploading motility studies, from any HM clinical location to the cloud where they can be viewed and interpreted by experts located elsewhere, is a more specific example of how Underwood is taking advantage of the digital age to optimize patient care. I confess to being a neophyte when it comes to AI, but I can see its potential in facilitating the type of big data research we hope will emanate from an Underwood Research Network and Houston Methodist Research Institute scientists and clinicians who are already active in this area. I am impressed that Houston Methodist is aware of the challenges and opportunities that new technologies present and will be ready to adopt all that is valid and pass on what is not. Our task is to be ready to grasp opportunities and deal with the challenges that this new age of medicine presents.

With the New Year approaching, we have been working hard in the Underwood Center to ensure continued excellence in our programs and innovative planning for next year. Our quality reviews demonstrate a continuation of excellent surgical results, with our superb safety maintained throughout 2024. We have made additional studies in expanding our colorectal volume and are hoping to initiate a Methodist Colorectal training program in the next year. Preparation for the start of the Pancreas Cyst Clinic as part of the Pancreas Surgery Program is ongoing with the acquisition of all data on pancreatic procedures and continued expansion of the Pancreas Registry. We are confident that this registry will be our springboard to expanding pancreatic surgery and extending more innovation into pancreatic procedures. Finally, we are planning a multidisciplinary planning meeting for a new program for Metabolic Management and Weight Loss.