  We are at a unique moment in history where there is a confluence of
technologies which will synergistically come together to transform the practice
of neurosurgery. These technological transformations will be all-encompassing,
including improved tools and methods for intraoperative performance of
neurosurgery, scalable solutions for asynchronous neurosurgical training and
simulation, as well as broad aggregation of operative data allowing fundamental
changes in quality assessment, billing, outcome measures, and dissemination of
surgical best practices. The ability to perform surgery more safely and more
efficiently while capturing the operative details and parsing each component of
the operation will open an entirely new epoch advancing our field and all
surgical specialties. The digitization of all components within the operating
room will allow us to leverage the various fields within computer and
computational science to obtain new insights that will improve care and
delivery of the highest quality neurosurgery regardless of location. The
democratization of neurosurgery is at hand and will be driven by our
development, extraction, and adoption of these tools of the modern world.
Virtual reality provides a good example of how consumer-facing technologies are
finding a clear role in industry and medicine and serves as a notable example
of the confluence of various computer science technologies creating a novel
paradigm for scaling human ability and interactions. The authors describe the
technology ecosystem that has come and highlight a myriad of computational and
data sciences that will be necessary to enable the operating room of the near
future.
