ReflectOR: an LLM-based Agent for Post-Operative Surgical Debriefing

Lorenzo Fumi, Marco Bombieri, Sara Allievi, Stefano Bonvini, Theodora Chaspari, Marco A. Zenati, Paolo Giorgini


Abstract
Ineffective teamwork and communication can generate medical errors in the high-pressure environment of surgery, making post-operative debriefings essential for enhancing team performance and patient safety. However, these sessions are frequently rushed or incomplete due to clinicians’ limited time. This paper introduces ReflectOR, an Agentic-AI architecture designed to support surgical debriefings by processing audio recordings from the operating room. The system employs specialized sub-agents that perform tasks such as generating summaries, constructing timelines of intraoperative events, identifying potential errors and counting the materials used. A qualitative evaluation indicates that the system effectively contextualizes transcripts, demonstrating its potential as a valuable tool for surgical debriefing. The paper also outlines key considerations for applying such an architecture in real-world clinical environments.
Anthology ID:
2026.iwsds-1.40
Volume:
Proceedings of the 16th International Workshop on Spoken Dialogue System Technology
Month:
February
Year:
2026
Address:
Trento, Italy
Editors:
Giuseppe Riccardi, Seyed Mahed Mousavi, Maria Ines Torres, Koichiro Yoshino, Zoraida Callejas, Shammur Absar Chowdhury, Yun-Nung Chen, Frederic Bechet, Joakim Gustafson, Géraldine Damnati, Alex Papangelis, Luis Fernando D’Haro, John Mendonça, Raffaella Bernardi, Dilek Hakkani-Tur, Giuseppe "Pino" Di Fabbrizio, Tatsuya Kawahara, Firoj Alam, Gokhan Tur, Michael Johnston
Venue:
IWSDS
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
418–427
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2026.iwsds-1.40/
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Lorenzo Fumi, Marco Bombieri, Sara Allievi, Stefano Bonvini, Theodora Chaspari, Marco A. Zenati, and Paolo Giorgini. 2026. ReflectOR: an LLM-based Agent for Post-Operative Surgical Debriefing. In Proceedings of the 16th International Workshop on Spoken Dialogue System Technology, pages 418–427, Trento, Italy. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
ReflectOR: an LLM-based Agent for Post-Operative Surgical Debriefing (Fumi et al., IWSDS 2026)
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PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/2026.iwsds-1.40.pdf