SAVE

SAVE — Execution

Funds United Kingdom programs strengthening surgical workforce development and team capacity in healthcare.

SAVE is a $50 million Wellcome Leap program addressing the global surgical workforce shortage, which the program estimates contributes to 1.5 million preventable deaths each year from lack of access to essential and emergency surgery. Program Director Thomas G. Weiser, MD, MPH — a practicing surgeon at Stanford University — leads a multi-team effort spanning three linked workstreams: surgical provider training and certification, development of minimally invasive surgical technology, and creation of assessment tools to validate surgical competency. The program's headline performance target is to double the annual number of surgical providers trained within a decade, adding 100,000 trained providers globally per year, while reducing postoperative death rates by 1 million deaths per year.

Performer teams have been selected and the program is in active execution as of mid-2026; no open solicitation exists. The $50 million budget follows Wellcome Leap's standard large-program scale, deployed across a multi-team performer cohort under milestone-based contracts. Eligible organizations for the original solicitation followed Wellcome Leap's standard global model — universities, research institutions, for-profit and nonprofit organizations, from any legal jurisdiction — with an implied emphasis on teams with direct access to surgical training environments and clinical deployment pathways. Contracts are structured around milestone accountability with active Wellcome Leap program management.

Organizations in surgical education, medical simulation, minimally invasive surgical device development, or clinical assessment tools should track Wellcome Leap for any future SAVE solicitation cycles. The program's combination of workforce scale targets (100,000 additional trained providers) and mortality reduction targets (1 million fewer deaths annually) requires performers to work at both the training technology and deployment-system levels simultaneously. Teams that can credibly span technology development and health system integration — particularly in lower-resource settings where the surgical gap is most acute — represent the strongest fit for future solicitations.