Faculty – Critical Appraisal & Clinical Risk

Marcin T. Czyż is a spine surgeon with a PhD-level background in biomechanical modelling, including finite element analysis of cervical spine injury and quantitative analysis of surgical constructs. This engineering-informed clinical profile gives him a distinctive perspective on AI: he understands modelling as a discipline, appreciates the gap between computational prediction and biological reality, and is well placed to interrogate the assumptions that underpin AI tools in surgical practice.

His value in the context of AI is not as an implementation champion but as a sophisticated critical appraiser. From his biomechanics background, he understands that models are approximations of reality, that performance in controlled conditions does not guarantee performance in real patients, and that the assumption of generalisability requires rigorous external validation. These are exactly the limitations that plague current orthopaedic and spinal AI research, where many tools are trained on single-centre datasets, perform impressively within their training environment, and fail to replicate results elsewhere.