Portrait of Dan Poenaru

Dan Poenaru

Associate Academic Member
Professor, McGill University, Department of Pediatric Surgery
Research Topics
AI and Healthcare
AI in Health
Medical Machine Learning

Biography

Dan Poenaru is a professor of pediatric surgery at McGill University and a senior scientist at the research institute of the McGill University Health Centre. He has a master’s degrees in health professions education and international development, and a doctorate in health strategy and management. Poenaru is a Fonds de recherche du Québec - Santé (FRQS) and a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)-funded investigator in patient-centered surgical care, head of the McGill CommiSur Lab, director of the Jean-Martin Laberge Fellowship in Global Pediatric Surgery, and a founding member of the Global Initiative for Children’s Surgery (GICS).

His current areas of academic interest are technology-assisted surgical communication and medical education, including AI, VR and digital health devices, patient-centred surgical care, and developing global surgical research capacity.

Current Students

PhD - McGill University
Master's Research - McGill University
PhD - McGill University
PhD - McGill University
PhD - McGill University
Principal supervisor :
Master's Research - McGill University
PhD - McGill University
PhD - McGill University
PhD - Université de Sherbrooke
Co-supervisor :
PhD - Université de Sherbrooke
Co-supervisor :
Master's Research - McGill University

Publications

The State of Artificial Intelligence in Pediatric Surgery: A Systematic Review
Mohamed Elahmedi
Riya Sawhney
Elena Guadagno
Fabio Botelho
Using Artificial Intelligence to Label Free-Text Operative and Ultrasound Reports for Grading Pediatric Appendicitis.
Waseem Abu-Ashour
Sister Mary Emil
Sherif Emil
ChatGPT: What Every Pediatric Surgeon Should Know About Its Potential Uses and Pitfalls
Raquel González
Russell Woo
A Francois Trappey
Stewart Carter
David Darcy
Ellen Encisco
Brian Gulack
Doug Miniati
Edzhem Tombash
Eunice Y. Huang
The evidence mismatch in pediatric surgical practice
Marina Broomfield
Zena Agabani
Elena Guadagno
Robert Baird
Defining Feasibility as a Criterion for Essential Surgery: A Qualitative Study with Global Children’s Surgery Experts
Alizeh Abbas
Henry E. Rice
Lubna Samad
Leveraging ChatGPT to Democratize and Decolonize Global Surgery: Large Language Models for Small Healthcare Budgets
Determinants of Access to Essential Surgery in the Democratic Republic of Congo
Luc Malemo Kalisya
Ava Yap
Boniface Mitume
Christian Salmon
Kambale Karafuli
Rosebella Onyango
Assessing the inclusion of children’s surgical care in National Surgical, Obstetric and Anaesthesia Plans: a policy content analysis
Sabrina Wimmer
Paul Truche
Elena Guadagno
Emmanuel Ameh
Lubna Samad
Emmanuel Mwenda Malabo Makasa
Sarah Greenberg
John G Meara
Tonnis H van Dijk
Objective While National Surgical, Obstetric and Anaesthesia Plans (NSOAPs) have emerged as a strategy to strengthen and scale up surgical h… (see more)ealthcare systems in low/middle-income countries (LMICs), the degree to which children’s surgery is addressed is not well-known. This study aims to assess the inclusion of children’s surgical care among existing NSOAPs, identify practice examples and provide recommendations to guide inclusion of children’s surgical care in future policies. Design We performed two qualitative content analyses to assess the inclusion of children’s surgical care among NSOAPs. We applied a conventional (inductive) content analysis approach to identify themes and patterns, and developed a framework based on the Global Initiative for Children’s Surgery’s Optimal Resources for Children’s Surgery document. We then used this framework to conduct a directed (deductive) content analysis of the NSOAPs of Ethiopia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania and Zambia. Results Our framework for the inclusion of children’s surgical care in NSOAPs included seven domains. We evaluated six NSOAPs with all addressing at least two of the domains. All six NSOAPs addressed ‘human resources and training’ and ‘infrastructure’, four addressed ‘service delivery’, three addressed ‘governance and financing’, two included ‘research, evaluation and quality improvement’, and one NSOAP addressed ‘equipment and supplies’ and ‘advocacy and awareness’. Conclusions Additional focus must be placed on the development of surgical healthcare systems for children in LMICs. This requires a focus on children’s surgical care separate from adult surgical care in the scaling up of surgical healthcare systems, including children-focused needs assessments and the inclusion of children’s surgery providers in the process. This study proposes a framework for evaluating NSOAPs, highlights practice examples and suggests recommendations for the development of future policies.
Exploring trust development in families of children towards surgical and emergency care providers: A scoping review of the literature.
Olivia Serhan
Alexander Moise
Elena Guadagno
Amalia M. Issa
Family risk communication preferences in pediatric surgery: A scoping review.
Arthega Selvarajan
Brandon Arulanandam
Elena Guadagno
Invited commentary on Stoehr J et al: The personal impact of involvement in international global health outreach: A national survey of former operation smile student volunteers.
Patient experience or patient satisfaction? A systematic review of child- and family-reported experience measures in pediatric surgery.
Julia Ferreira
Prachikumari Patel
Elena Guadagno
Nikki Ow
Jo Wray
Sherif Emil