Who, What, Why: Katelyn Candido on improving surgical procedures and keeping health care human-first

When Katelyn Candido came to Penn as a first-generation undergraduate, her plan was to become a physician focused on making health care more equitable—a career goal partially informed by her family’s experiences with the medical system. She triple-majored in neuroscience, psychology, and medical anthropology in the College of Arts & Sciences, and triple-minored in medical sociology, bioethics, and philosophy. This equipped Candido, now a second-year in the Perelman School of Medicine (PSOM) from Dallas, Texas, with the well-rounded, human-centered insight that has defined much of her medical education and clinical research at Penn.

“The primary reason I went into medicine was the human side—hearing people’s stories and helping make very vulnerable moments feel a little less overwhelming,” says Candido, an aspiring neurosurgeon. Psychology complemented the behavioral foundations of her pre-medicine neuroscience studies; medical anthropology and sociology helped her identify structural barriers to health care; and philosophy and bioethics challenged her to consider real-world, everyday patient experiences in broader contexts and take a more inquisitive, out-of-the-box approach to research.

As an undergraduate, Candido engaged in patient-centered research across disciplines, often focused on testing novel approaches to nerve and trauma surgeries and examining the long-term outcomes. This challenged Candido to consider the impact of different treatment methods and clinical experiences on patients’ quality of life, informing her neurosurgery research in medical school.

Pursuing a diverse Penn education “makes you dig a little deeper,” says Candido, noting it’s inspired her to look for different approaches to neurosurgery. To answer this question, Candido tested a new tool that shows promise for making surgical treatments easier for patients and surgeons alike.

During surgeries in Penn Medicine’s operating rooms, Candido evaluated the effectiveness of SAVI SCOUT—an FDA-approved radar reflector tool that helps surgeons better localize and operate on complex nerve targets, including soft-tissue tumors and post-traumatic neuromas. Neurosurgeons often spend 8-12 hours on just one procedure, Candido says, with most of that time spent identifying the precise target areas. Patients typically require numerous follow-up visits and often face long recovery times.

Looking at factors such as operating room time, 90-day follow-up outcomes, hospital readmissions, and post-operative complications, Candido found that SAVI SCOUT shows immense promise for use in surgical operations versus standard localization methods.

She also found the novel tool to be effective in patients of various body types, which may help make certain neurosurgeries more accessible for all patients. Additionally, the tool is useful in patients with histories of neurosurgery and/or radiation treatment, which Candido notes can sometimes impact the anatomy of nerve systems.

SAVI SCOUT, Candido says, can give patients the ability to have “smaller dissections and resections for certain tumors” and give providers “increased confidence” for identifying complex nerve targets with greater precision. This can result in more frequent “one-and-done” procedures, saving many patients from multiple follow-up visits or repeat surgeries.

Penn Medicine is among the only hospitals in the area currently using SAVI SCOUT. The next step is expanding its use to other surgical centers in Philadelphia and across the region, says Candido, who shared project findings at the 2025 PSOM Student Research Symposium and was selected to present her work at the American Association of Neurological Surgeons annual meeting this May.

A substantial part of Candido’s motivation for this work hits close to home: Her family experienced “certain barriers with the health care system and not [having] great experiences with it.” This fueled her desire to build more trust in medicine and help ensure that health care advances reach communities more equitably.

As a first-generation Hispanic student, Candido also strives to be a role model for people at home, on campus, and in her local community. She has served as a teaching assistant since her second year at Penn, providing mentorship to undergraduates. Candido also volunteers at a Philadelphia-based nonprofit clinic that provides essential medical care for immigrant Hispanic populations. In this role, she takes patient vitals, assists with scheduling, helps with language translation, and organizes community outreach.

At the heart of Candido’s varied academic, research, and extracurricular involvement at Penn rests a core notion: Bringing health care to as many patients as possible starts by integrating medicine with humanity.

“There are many different pieces of the patient’s story,” Candido says, “and many different aspects of medicine that shape people’s lives.”