We are witnessing the transformation of operating rooms into smart hubs of interconnected advanced technologies where multiple, highly specialized professionals must coordinate for the benefit of patients. Such high-stake sociotechnical process is generally highly effective but error prone. Surgical data science aims to improve the safety and efficiency of modern surgery by modelling multimodal surgical data and developing artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to provide timely assistance to caregivers.

However, to build clinically impactful surgical data science tools there is a need for a tight and effective collaboration between clinicians and computer scientists. Currently, there is a lack of opportunities for these community to meet, learn from each other and finally develop the common language needed to team up and complement each other.