When Professor George Hanna became Head of Department at Imperial College London, he had an ambitious idea: to establish a regional simulation-based training and assessment programme for surgical trainees across London and the surrounding regions.
Many believed it simply wasn’t possible.
To build the programme with genuine educational and scientific rigour, Professor Hanna brought in Dr Stella Mavroveli, a psychologist, applying principles from psychology, assessment and education to the way surgical skills were taught and assessed.
It was the beginning of what would become one of the worlds largest surgical simulation programmes.
As the programme took shape, a major challenge quickly became clear.
Existing surgical simulators were either prohibitively expensive or lacked the realism required for meaningful surgical training.
So the team tried something different.
They took a chance on an artist who had never previously worked with silicone and paired him with expert breast surgeons at Imperial. Together, they developed Lily — a breast and axillary surgical simulator.
It was the first model in what would eventually become the SiMPEDIA portfolio.
Over the following decade and a half, the London Surgical Skills Programme grew into one of Europe’s largest simulation-based surgical training and assessment programmes, embedded within postgraduate surgical training.
More than 1,000 surgical trainees have now passed through and been assessed within the programme.
As training needs evolved, so did the simulators.
The portfolio expanded from breast and axillary surgery into oncoplastic breast surgery, colectomy, appendicectomy, inguinal hernia repair and vascular procedures, with models developed around the needs of trainees, faculty and industry partners.
But something else began to happen.
Consultant surgeons teaching on the programme started asking to purchase the simulators for training within their own hospitals. Medical device companies began using them for workshops, education and internal training.
Models originally created to solve a local training problem were finding applications far beyond Imperial College London.
As demand continued to grow, Professor George Hanna and Dr Stella Mavroveli made the decision to spin the technology out from Imperial College London and establish SiMPEDIA.
The principle behind the company was simple:
High-quality surgical simulation should be accessible, scalable and affordable.
Their experience also gives SiMPEDIA an unusual perspective.
Professor Hanna and Dr Mavroveli remain Co-Directors of the London Surgical Skills Programme, meaning SiMPEDIA’s leadership are not simply manufacturers of simulation models, they remain active end users, educators and researchers within surgical training.
Every model is therefore shaped by the environment it is designed to serve.
Today, SiMPEDIA is growing rapidly.
Our simulators are used by leading hospitals, surgical societies, universities and medical device companies across more than 20 countries.
Our team continues to expand, as does our portfolio — but the philosophy remains the same as it was when the first model was developed at Imperial College London:
Ultra-realistic simulation. Made affordable. Built around the needs of surgical training.
We don’t want simulation to simply support surgical education.
We want it to advance it.
