Surgical Intelligence Archives

From Innovation To Impact

Jordan on September 27, 2024

Why value must lead in healthcare

In today’s world, innovations in the healthcare space need to show value immediately. Gone are the days when health systems were willing to adopt new technology that promises value. Rightfully so, health systems today require examples of both short-term and long-term value before adopting a new technology.

Surgical Intelligence in Action

Advanced technology like artificial intelligence (AI) is not new in the surgical field. Surgical intelligence, however, is still in its infancy, and there are multiple schools of thought on what applications and data sources should be leveraged to provide the most value. But, one thing is consistent, examples of how value has been demonstrated is necessary.

Let’s start with just the surgical video alone. Capturing, structuring, and analyzing surgical video unlocks unique insights that set the foundation for larger-scale, comprehensive impact. Leveraging Theator, our partners have improved surgical quality, reduced operating time, and accelerated training. Let’s dive into each one of these.

Want to skip to the good part? Download some of our favorite customer stories here.

Example 1: improving the quality of patient care

We have seen a variety of approaches in surgical-intelligence-driven quality improvement, some proactive, and some reactive. A common place for our partners to start is to surface where low adoption to surgical practices that increase the quality of a procedure exist and create a proactive quality initiative to drive an increase in department-wide adoption. Time and time again, we see significant adoption increase over the course of a few short months.

Example 2: reducing operative time

Operative time can be analyzed in a few ways – total procedure duration, per-step duration, and also idle time (both in-body and out-of-body). All of these time elements are important to driving consistent and predictable OR scheduling, and, managing OR costs as every minute counts. Structuring and analyzing this data has shown our partners where and why significant idle time is contributing to increased operative time, where outliers exist to drive standardization and more.

Example 3: accelerate education for trainees

Have you ever asked a surgical trainee what resource they use to prep for a surgical procedure? The answer is probably not their medical school textbooks. Rather, the answer is likely YouTube. We know video is a valuable learning tool. Now, with surgical intelligence, trainers can specify which videos to review, provide constructive feedback on specific parts of the video in which a trainee operated, and collaborate in so many more ways.

These examples are just the beginning of surgical intelligence. To read even more, download this booklet to read through some of our favorite examples of how our partners are demonstrating value every day with surgical intelligence.

Surgical Intelligence: intracorporeal, extracorporeal, ecosystem

Jordan on September 18, 2024

The TL;DR on surgical intelligence solutions

The introduction of AI in healthcare and specifically, AI in surgical care, has sparked a lot of interest, albeit a lot of confusion, about what value it can deliver today and also long-term. AI can be so broad, with so many different applications. Specifically in surgery, there are also various applications. If you are just getting started on this journey, check out additional resources here. When health systems are looking to improve surgical care itself, what they need is to focus on surgical intelligence.

Where to start

Surgical intelligence can mean something different depending on who is defining it. Health systems and vendors alike. Rarely does a one-size-fits-all approach work, and the same is true with surgical intelligence. Therefore, it turns into a matter of focus for the health system, and understanding what challenges a health system is facing overall. But where do you start? Download our roadmap for choosing the right solution for you.

Intracorporeal, extracorporeal, or ecosystem?

We’ve categorized the available solutions into three buckets: intracorporeal, extracorporeal, and ecosystem.

Intracorporeal surgical video solutions	focus on the surgery itself, and codifying that data to deliver value.
Extracorporeal video solutions	focus on the external aspects of surgery, such as room setup and workflow.
Ecosystem surgery solutions	focus on broader aspects of the digital infrastructure related to surgery.

Refer to page 11 in our roadmap to continue comparing the 3 solution types.

Choosing the right solution for you

There are pros and cons to each approach and must-have considerations when adopting surgical intelligence into your health system. Ready to determine the right choice for your health system? Download our roadmap here.

Same Logo Means Consistent Care, Or Does It?

Jordan on June 26, 2024

The best brands have a logo that elicits a positive, consistent response. Coca-cola? You see the fizz and your mouth begins to water. McDonalds? Those golden arches represent a burger and fries, delivered fast and tasting the exact same, whether you’re in your city or 1,000 miles away.

Brands signal consistency and as consumers we have come to expect that.

Healthcare, in some senses, is not all that different from fast food. As hospitals all over the US are consolidating, and well-recognized, big, bright logos are replacing smaller ones, patients will expect the level and standard of care that comes with the brand of the new logo. Whether it is the flagship hospital or a satellite campus, when those “golden arches” are on the front of the building, a patient is expecting the same high quality care.

Not all hospitals are created equal

Variability in surgery is inherent – patients don’t present the exact same anatomy, tool availability varies, and surgeon and staff experience varies. Driving consistency in how surgery is performed seems near impossible, at least without the help of technology.

Routinely and automatically capturing and analyzing surgical video is the first step in identifying variability, with actionable ways of how to standardize care. Multiple health systems across multiple surgical specialties have already identified specific sources of variability.

Read on to see a few examples.

Variability in adoption of surgical practices

In laparoscopic cholecystectomies, one health system (comprising three hospital sites) averaged a 40% adoption of Critical View of Safety, a widely-accepted surgical best practice that reduces the risk of bile duct injuries. When diving into each of the three hospital sites, variability was uncovered in average adoption:

- Hospital 1 = 33%
- Hospital 2 = 45%
- Hospital 3 = 70%

Want more details behind this analysis? Click here!

There’s a similar story here for Right Hemicolectomies in Colorectal Surgery, Robot-Assisted Radical Prostatectomies in Urology Surgery and Hysterectomies in Gynecology Surgery. Despite being under the same healthcare system, separate hospital sites within the system have wide variability in adoption to surgical practices, median procedure time, and more. With the power of AI technology, these insights, for the first time, are surfaced and proactively addressed.

Download the full report here >>

Procedure Step Detection… On Steroids

Theator on June 10, 2024

Can we skip to the good part?

Have you ever recorded an entire concert with your phone? Or a fireworks show? No one goes back to look at the whole thing, you want to fast-forward to the meaningful moments. Fast-forward to your favorite part or when something interesting happens.

It’s the same with surgery. Surgeons don’t have the time to go back and review hours of surgery after scrubbing out from a long day in the operating room.

The two longest surgical videos in our database are (hours:minutes:seconds):

- Robotic anterior resection: 9:52:28

- Robotic whipple: 8:30:19

Even procedures this long, are automatically structured. With more than 3,000 procedures captured by Theator every week at a median duration of 42 minutes, that is a lot of data. A lot.

The video is yours, we just make sense of it

Surgical videos need to be structured to be useful. Not just with tools and time, but with all procedure steps, intraoperative events, surgical practices, and more. Structuring with procedure steps is the first step to extracting value from surgical video capture. A deep tech stack enables this to be possible and importantly, enables scalability.

When a procedure is structured, surgeons can easily navigate to meaningful moments, trainees can quickly review interesting clips, surgical teams can quickly get answers to questions (read how one hospital confirmed no foreign body was left in a patient using quick video review), and so much more.

But, don’t just take it from us. A few abstracts and publications examples, written by our customers, have shown the ability of our AI tech to automate procedure step annotations (which, is just one element we structure). Check them out for yourselves below:

Urology

- Transurethral Bladder Tumor Resection (TURBT) – Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence
- Robotic-Assisted Radical Prostatectomy (RARP) – Journal of Urology
- Partial and Radical Nephrectomy – Society of Urologic Oncology

Gynecology

- Hysterectomy – published in the International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics

General Surgery

- Totally Extraperitoneal Inguinal Hernia Repair (TEP) – Surgical Endoscopy

Want to check these out all in one place? Download the cheat sheet here.

Surgical Intelligence and Gynecologic Surgery

Theator on April 29, 2024

What Are The Advantages of AI in Gynecologic Surgery?

As the role of AI-enabled tools in surgical care expands, clinical research continues to validate the benefits of integrating streamlined AI technologies into operating rooms. In gynecology, surgical AI integration has the potential to improve quality of care and patient outcomes. A win-win.

What is Surgical Intelligence?

Surgical Intelligence is the analysis of surgical video data using AI that can surface insights that aren’t possible with manual data analysis alone. Its ability to identify specific and actionable measures to improve patient outcomes is why this technology is the future of surgical care.

Why Surgical Intelligence for gynecologic surgery?

Surgical Intelligence offers a number of advantages for clinicians and patients related to gynecologic surgeries.

Surgical step identification:

The ability of AI to identify the steps of a surgical procedure by analyzing video data is the first step toward harnessing this data to support clinicians and improve outcomes.

Specific to laparoscopic hysterectomy, available AI technologies demonstrated a 92% concordance between human and AI-directed annotation of surgical steps in one study, while a separate study found a similar 93% concordance rate between humans and AI-enabled technology in annotation of surgical steps.

The ability of AI to detect surgical steps significantly cuts down on the amount of time that would be required for humans to manually perform this task. This, in turn, allows for recorded surgical videos to be used more effectively to bolster the knowledge base and skill set of trainees.

Continuous quality improvement:

AI demonstrates a high rate of accuracy in identifying the surgical steps of a laparoscopic hysterectomy. This is notable because when AI is able to correctly identify these steps and landmarks in real time, it can then be trained to provide clinical decision support at the point of care.

For example, identification of the ureters is a critical step to avoid ureteral injury in laparoscopic hysterectomy. However, this step isn’t universally performed during this procedure. By surfacing this information to a hospital’s gynecology department, a proactive, data-driven quality initiative can be implemented to drive adoption of this surgical practice—therefore increasing the safety of laparoscopic hysterectomy procedures.

Outcomes assessment:

Because Surgical Intelligence integrates with patient outcomes data, it offers the opportunity to link what happens in the OR to outcomes such as infections, readmissions, reoperations, and increased length of stay. This allows healthcare organizations to identify systemic and individual areas for quality improvement.

Surgical Intelligence represents the future of care in all surgical specialties. By effectively and efficiently identifying procedural steps, AI-enabled tools have the power to assist clinicians with making evidence-based decisions at the point of care. Furthermore, they can link this data to patient outcomes to identify how intraoperative events affect what happens after surgery. The potential benefits of this technology for gynecologic (and all other) surgeries are significant, and staying ahead of the curve with Surgical Intelligence will benefit surgeons and patients alike.

As Lung Cancer Rates Continue to Rise in Never-Smokers, Theator Expands Surgical Solution into Thoracic Surgery

Theator on November 16, 2023

Theator Now Supports Thoracic Surgery

We are excited to announce that we have expanded our Surgical Intelligence Platform into the field of thoracic surgery. Despite there being over 530,000 thoracic procedures conducted in the US each year, the surgical specialty is facing a major deficit of cardiothoracic surgeons. With lung cancer continuing to be on the rise in never-smokers, Theator’s award-winning technology will help hospitals meet the growing demand for minimally invasive thoracic surgeries by providing surgeons in the OR with the actionable insights they need to not only address but also up-level patient care across the board.

"At Theator, we are focused on generating actionable insights to positively impact patient outcomes and improve the quality of patient care. With the field facing a decreased supply of cardiothoracic surgeons, and thoracic surgery being a highly specialized and multidisciplinary field that involves collaboration among thoracic surgeons, pulmonologists, oncologists, anesthesiologists, and other healthcare professionals, it's never been more important than now to capture and disseminate better information, so patients, no matter where they live, will be assured they are receiving the best care possible."

Tamir Wolf, co-founder and CEO of Theator

With its rollout timed to November’s Lung Cancer Awareness month, Theator’s technology will target the specialized field of thoracic surgery, spanning the treatment of conditions affecting the organs within the chest cavity, including the lungs, esophagus, and other thoracic structures.

“Currently, there are limited ways for surgeons to access actionable and reliable evaluations of thoracic surgical performance,” said Dr. Matthew Ninan, Director of Thoracic Surgery at HCA Florida Healthcare West Division. “Objective benchmarks are yet to be defined as well. By having these measurements at our fingertips, surgeons will be able to meet crucial performance indicators for each specific task throughout the procedure, improving our outcomes and providing much-needed insights into the patient’s recovery.”

Despite technological advancements in the industry, many hospitals do not leverage the latest tech advancements in the OR. And, this lack of technology is felt by patients as well. A recent study commissioned by Theator found that while 80% of patients were satisfied with their surgical outcomes, nearly a quarter (24%) of them needed corrective surgery. Of the patients who had complications during surgery (15%), over half of them believed they could have been avoided (58%). And, almost a quarter of patients felt that if their surgeon were able to capture video of their surgery, they likely would have had a different result.

Theator’s ability to help hospital systems increase the adoption of evidence-based surgical practices, has helped make it a leading technology in the operating room, with hospitals around the globe signing on daily.

Introducing Theator Spotlight

Theator on November 13, 2023

Ever wonder if all of the hospitals within a health system are achieving surgical practices? Or how different intraoperative techniques impact patient outcomes? Or why the cost of a procedure is higher at one facility than at another?

Theator Spotlight: Shining a light on surgical variability

Wonder no more! Theator Spotlight offers a window into this void of data. We’ve analyzed thousands of procedures to understand the causes of surgical variability.

We’re excited to introduce Theator Spotlight: shining a light on never-before-seen surgical variability insights and its causes by procedure, and surgical practices to improve outcomes.

We’ll be releasing exclusive insights into intraoperative data drawn from our 6 million+ hours of structured surgical videos.

Theator Spotlight highlights the most impactful surgical practices for each procedure and how they affect patient outcomes, as well as how often these practices are followed. It also identifies the reasons behind surgical variability—across and within health systems—and how to reduce it.

The best part?
It's completely free.

Whether or not your hospital has implemented the Theator Surgical Intelligence Platform (which draws insights from your hospital’s own procedures), these updates are an invaluable way to identify key variables that can impact:

- Patient outcomes and quality of care
- Profitability of a procedure
- Institutional transparency
- Costs to your hospital
- Operational efficiency

To get early access to Theator Spotlight, sign up for the waitlist below and be the first to know when these insights are revealed.

From Innovation To Impact

Why value must lead in healthcare

Surgical Intelligence in Action