
Hologic Partners With AAGL and Inovus to Provide Training Solutions to New OB-GYNs
Hologic, a global leader in women’s health, has announced a new collaboration with the American Association of Gynecologic Laparoscopists (AAGL) and Inovus Medical to enhance OB-GYN training for minimally invasive surgeries. In this partnership, Hologic will supply hysteroscopes for AAGL’s Essentials in Minimally Invasive Gynecologic Surgery (EMIGS) hands-on hysteroscopy skills training program for OB-GYN residents.
This initiative aims to improve women’s healthcare by providing future OB-GYNs with education on the latest treatment options for common gynecologic conditions. Hologic is committed to ensuring that OB-GYNs are aware of all available treatment options, including laparoscopic and hysteroscopic solutions.
AAGL launched the EMIGS-validated training and testing program in 2022 to offer a gynecology-specific cognitive and skills test for OB-GYN residents. The program enables residents to meet the Surgical Skills Program Standard for the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology examination. Inovus Medical, known for its surgical training technologies, manufactures and delivers the hands-on training equipment for EMIGS. The company offers the HystAR™ digital learning platform, designed to improve high-fidelity hysteroscopy simulation. It features natural haptics, full anatomy representation, performance tracking, and procedure simulation. The platform supports both wet lab and dry lab training, covering procedures like polypectomy, myomectomy, and more, providing objective feedback and tracking surgical performance metrics. It also sells the the LapAR™ Pro, a surgical simulation platform aimed at high-fidelity laparoscopic surgery training. The simulator provides close-to-life haptic feedback through synthetic soft tissue models and tracks instrument movement in real-time using advanced computer vision algorithms on validated curricula. It also offers full procedure simulation across multiple specialties and allows triggering and managing intraoperative complications. Furthermore, it provides objective feedback on surgical performance metrics and enables tracking of training progress with an online portfolio.
As part of this partnership, Hologic will provide one Omni® hysteroscope to all Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education-approved residency programs and loan one LapAR® and one HystAR® to all participating sites. They will also support software licensing for Inovus’ connected training platform, Totum®. OB-GYN residents will have the opportunity to train with Hologic’s gynecologic surgical tools. The company sells the Acessa RF ablation device for uterine fibroid treatment, the MyoSure tissue removal suite which is also for uterine fibroids, the NovaSure endometrial ablation device for endometriosis, and fluid management systems.
Linda Michels, AAGL Executive Director, expressed enthusiasm for the collaboration, highlighting its potential to provide high-quality training tools to future OB-GYNs. By partnering with Hologic and Inovus, AAGL seeks to ensure equitable access to essential training resources.