- Dr. Mehran Anvari
- Co-PI
Surgeon and Founding Director
Centre for Minimal Access Surgery
Dr. Mehran Anvari is a Professor of Surgery and Director of Surgical Research at McMaster University. In May 2004, he was appointed to the newly created Chair in Minimally Invasive Surgery and Surgical Innovation, and in June 2005, he became the Founding Director of the McMaster Institute for Surgical Invention, Innovation and Education. Dr. Anvari completed his medical training in Britain at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and his surgical residency training in Canada at McMaster University. He then spent three years in Adelaide Australia obtaining his PhD degree before returning to Hamilton to establish his academic and clinical practice.
He is the founding director of the Centre for Minimal Access Surgery (CMAS), affiliated with McMaster University and based at St. Joseph’s Healthcare. CMAS is the first centre of its kind, dedicated to promoting minimal access techniques in all surgical specialities through the training of surgeons and clinical research studies. A main focus of Dr. Anvari’s research in recent years has been on the use of the latest telecommunication and robotic technologies to provide guidance and instruction to local surgeons during live laparoscopic surgery at community hospitals in northern Ontario and Quebec. In 2003, Dr. Anvari established the world’s first telerobotic surgical service linking St. Joseph's Healthcare and North Bay District Hospital, and has since performed 22 remote telerobotic surgeries. He was the Chief Scientific Officer for the NEEMO 7 mission, which demonstrated for the first time that with telementoring from an expert surgeon, a non-physician could provide emergency medical care in an extreme environment in the absence of a physician. This research has the potential to revolutionize the delivery of emergency medical and surgical care in extreme environments such as space travel, and in areas on earth where access to medical experts is limited or non-existent. As Chief Scientific Officer for NEEMO 9, Dr. Anvari will lead investigations into the ability of a newly developed robotic system to allow a remote surgeon to perform surgical tasks in extreme environments. NEEMO 9 will also build on the success of NEEMO 7 by studying the effects of telecommunication latency (time delay) on the performance of telementored and telerobotic tasks in an environment that simulates the conditions encountered during space exploration.
Dr. Anvari is the author of over 100 publications and is frequently invited to present on the use of robotics in surgery. He is also very active in teaching, having mentored 50 surgeons and participated in the training of at least 700 surgeons across the country. Dr. Anvari has also been awarded the Government of Ontario Diamond Award for Innovation in Technology and the Government of Canada Gold Medal of Distinction for his pioneering work in telerobotic surgery.
