Roger Hartl, MD

Yeah, I'm happy to do that.

I'm a neurosurgeon.

I'm a spine neurosurgeon at this point in my career.

I run the spine program at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City, and I'm one of the co-directors of ArcSpine at New York Presbyterian Hospital in New York City.

Sure.

We have an integrated and very large program now.

We're at New York Presbyterian Hospital in New York City.

And what we've done over the last 10 years is really integrate the spine programs at Columbia Cornell under the umbrella of New York Presbyterian Hospital.

And in that role, of course, and I do this together with Larry Lanky, who's like Dean Cha, who are my main counterparts at the Columbia campus, and with Dan Ruh here at Cornell.

But obviously working with a large group of healthcare providers, surgical, non-operative, from really multiple disciplines that are all importantly involved in the care of patients with back issues.

You know, there's so many things that come up all the time that are really relevant and sometimes directly related to surgery, sometimes a little bit outside surgery.

But what I've seen over the last year has become really more and more interesting and I think relevant in our care of patients with back and neck issues is certainly, I would say there are three things.

There's artificial intelligence, of course, as in many aspects of life and health care.

What I see evolve more and more is biologics, you know, disc repair, especially for degenerative disc disease.

I'm not talking about fusion biologics, really more biologics in terms of disc repair, disc regeneration, and sometimes even disc replacement.

And then finally, as a surgeon in the operating room who's very excited about minimally invasive spine surgery, I think that whole area of navigation and robotics is really fascinating.

So those are the three.

areas that I follow very closely amongst many others, but those are three areas within spine surgery and medicine, spine medicine, that I think are the most exciting.

Artificial intelligence, biologics, and the whole area of navigation and robotics.

Yeah, I think the challenge with spine biologics is partially, obviously, the regulatory pathway that has really challenged our ability to pursue some of the fascinating strategies that come to mind when you're thinking about degenerative disc disease and biologics.