New Twitter-Enabled Interactive TV Show Lets Viewers Interact with Surgeons During Operations

UK terrestrial broadcaster, Channel 4, has announced plans for a new four-part series that will allow viewers to interact with prominent surgeons as they carry out "life-changing" operations. Entitled "The Operation: Surgery Live" and airing May 25th-28th, the new interactive television show will feature surgeons from various high-profile NHS hospitals (Papworth, Southampton General, Addenbrooke's and King's College Hospital, London) performing such operations as heart, brain and stomach surgery and tumor removal. It is being produced by Windfall Films, in association with Wellcome Collection (note: the latter, which is an arm of biomedical research charity, the Wellcome Trust, operates a facility on London's Euston Road where visitors can explore the connections between medicine, life and art), and will be hosted by Krishnan Guru-Murthy.

According to Channel 4, the show will allow viewers to interact live--via Twitter, phone and email--with the operating room as operations are carried out. At "appropriate points" during some of the operations, the broadcaster says, viewers will even be able to speak to the show's surgeon-stars by phone. "Surgeons routinely teach and talk observers through operations," David Glover, Channel 4's commissioning editor for science, said in a prepared statement. "Now, for the first time, viewers will be able to interact with surgeons as they carry out life-changing procedures. We hope that the series will de-mystify surgery, encourage discussion and help viewers to understand their own bodies, as well as showing the care, dedication and skill that goes into modern surgery."