Announcing the 2025 Annual Data Driven Surgery Conference: Empowering Policy & Practice
 
Friday the 5th & Saturday the 6th of December 2025
CSIR International Convention Centre, Pretoria, South Africa
 
Register your interest in attending here
Register your interest in sponsorship support here
Download the sponsorship prospectus here

Call for Abstracts & Speaker Proposals

We invite clinicians, researchers, policymakers, and innovators to submit abstracts or speaker proposals for the 2nd Annual Data Driven Surgery Conference, jointly hosted by Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University and Safe Surgery SA. This year’s conference will focus on the power of perioperative data to drive clinical excellence, equity, and innovation in surgical care.

Themes and Topics

  • Clinical Tools Fair – Demonstrate a digital or practical tool that enhances surgical care, quality improvement, or patient safety.
  • Making Surgical Data Work for You – Share stories or strategies for using data in clinical practice, private sector initiatives, or institutional benchmarking.
  • Data-Driven Teams Save Lives – Present on how surgical teams use routine data to strengthen communication, reduce risk, or improve outcomes.
  • Digital Dashboards & Decision Tools – Show us how your team visualises and acts on perioperative data.
  • Open Source & Local Innovation – Present tools built in or for African contexts to address perioperative data challenges.
  • Cross-Sector Collaboration – Insights from partnerships between public, private, academic, or non-profit sectors to advance surgical data use.

Submission Guidelines

Please submit a short abstract (300 words max) or session proposal by 30 August 2025.
Include the following:

  • Title of your proposed talk or demo
  • Presenter name(s), institution(s), and contact info
  • Abstract or description of your session
  • Preferred presentation format (Talk, Panel, Workshop, or Demo)
  • Relevance to one or more of the conference themes

Who Should Submit?

We welcome submissions from surgeons, anaesthetists, nurses, technologists, researchers, data scientists, quality improvement teams, facility managers, provincial and national DoH officials, and health entrepreneurs.

Submit Your Proposal

Send your proposal to: admin@safesurgery.co.za

For more information, visit: https://safesurgery.co.za/events or contact: hyla.kluyts@smu.ac.za

On Wednesday the 4th of December 2024, a conference on Data Driven Surgery: Empowering Policy & Practice, was co-hosted by Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University (SMU) and Safe Surgery SA. The programme included impactful presentations by high-profile South African and Namibian colleagues, and insightful discussions guided by illustrious panellists. Find the programme here.

We would like to thank all delegates for their participation and positive feedback. A heartfelt thanks also to our sponsors!

Gold sponsorship 2025:

Silver sponsorship 2024 and 2025:

Annual sponsors: