maneuver around the room?
• How easy is it for anybody in the OR to switch between screens?
"If your whole staff isn't able to easily use your system, it's useless,"
says Mr. Smith.
Involve a good cross-section of your staff in the vetting and trial-
ing process as early as possible — everyone from service- line
leaders to end-users like physicians and nurses, to installation
team leads from IT, to entire departments such as finance, biomed
and facilities, says Ms. Gallant.
J U L Y 2 0 1 9 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y. N E T • 8 9
technology, ask yourself, "What's our upgrade path? When will
we need to overhaul all of our integrated OR equipment?" Then,
proceed accordingly.
• Keep utilization front and center. If you're doing complex
GYN procedures, the 3,840 x 2,160-pixel resolution of a true 4K
surgical video system may very well improve outcomes by let-
ting your surgeons see tiny variations in the tissue they wouldn't
see with, say, a standard-definition system. The granularity of
the imaging could even potentially lead to fewer repeat proce-
dures that eat away at your facility's revenue. If you're working
in ortho, on the other hand, you don't need 4K. You can easily
live in SD when you're only looking at bone.
• Free yourself from brand bias. In the healthcare world, it's
easy to be brand-conscious and say, "I'm a Stryker person or I'm
a Storz person," and that mindset can cloud your decision-mak-
ing. Yes, this is a sensitive issue, and in many cases it's surgeon
preference on equipment, but when it comes to surgical video,
you shouldn't have to always think if I have an X-brand scope, I
need an X-brand monitor. — Jared Bilski
