The Role of Crowdsourcing in Assessing Surgical Skills.

BACKGROUND: Assessing surgical skill is critical in improving patient care while reducing medical errors, length of stay, and readmission rates. Crowdsourcing provides 1 potential method for accurately assessing this; only recently has crowdsourcing been studied as a valid way to provide feedback to surgeons. The results of such studies are explored. DATA SOURCES: A systematic literature search was performed on PubMed to identify studies that have attempted to validate crowdsourcing as a method for assessing surgical skill. Through a combination of abstract screening and full-length review, 9 studies that met the inclusion criteria were reviewed. CONCLUSIONS: Crowdsourcing has been validated as an important way to provide feedback for surgical skill. It has been demonstrated to be effective in both dry-lab and live surgery, for a variety of tasks and methods. However, more studies must be performed to ensure that crowdsourcing can provide quality feedback in a wider variety of scenarios.

A Guide to Scientific Crowdfunding.

Crowdfunding represents an attractive new option for funding research projects, especially for students and early-career scientists or in the absence of governmental aid in some countries. The number of successful science-related crowdfunding campaigns is growing, which demonstrates the public's willingness to support and participate in scientific projects. Putting together a crowdfunding campaign is not trivial, however, so here is a guide to help you make yours a success.