Olympus Corporation of the Americas (OCA) has announced plans to acquire Image Stream Medical, a specialist in hybrid operating rooms, as well as other “clinical visual collaboration solutions.”

"Image Stream Medical is a top tier integration provider that continues to experience consistent market growth on the strength of its products and operational excellence,” Nacho Abia, OCA President and CEO said in a statement.

The deal, he added, “provides us with an exciting opportunity to enhance the continuum of care throughout the health care enterprise.”

The acquisition would bring Olympus the Massachusetts-based health care systems integrator's “technology and know-how in visualization and health care environment integration,” stated the company.

It provides “vendor-neutral solutions,” according to the company website. These solutions include: procedure space integration and recording; providing a medical virtual presence to enable remote participation; video conferencing; live video streaming; video editing; content management; and integration of procedure videos and images with EHR, PACs and VNA system data.

The goal is “to offer superior end-to-end workflow for every clinical specialty, an approach to IT backbone technology that unifies separate clinical areas allowing complete enterprise-wide access to critical data and media, and the proven experience leveraging information and communications technology,” according to Olympus.

The deal, slated to close in June, will be worth “up to $87 million,” advised Reuters.

“By connecting clinicians with the visual insights they need, and with each other no matter where they are, we help teams work more efficiently and effectively," said Eddie Mitchell, Image Stream Medical CEO, who added that joining with "Olympus' unparalleled imaging and surgical technology,” would “allow our customers to provide improved care for their patients."

The “synergy” between the two companies was also stressed by Todd Usen, president of the Medical Systems Group at OCA. "Combining Olympus' global reach and expertise, world class support infrastructure, and market leadership with Image Stream Medical's innovative products will result in superior workflow and patient care, and safety enhancements for health care enterprises,” he stated.

The impact of the deal will benefit U.S. customers first, but plans call for an expansion by Olympus that will “subsequently create a leading global systems integration platform.”

For now, no immediate change in resources for customers is anticipated. But in the future, Olympus envisions that clients will be able to expand their systems integration implementations.

At present, Image Stream Medical “will continue to operate as a wholly owned subsidiary under the existing name.”

The market for hybrid operating rooms is growing, according to an Image Stream Medical-Philips white paper on the former's website. It noted that, “it is projected that 75 percent of cardiovascular surgeons will be working in hybrid operating suites by 2018, and the hybrid market is expected to grow at 16.1 percent per year from 2016 to 2022.”

This surge in growth for hybrid ORs does raise the issue of a correlative rise in HAIs, according to Robert Dewey, writing in the April 2017 issue of Healthcare Business News magazine.

“Anxiety over HAIs extends to the hybrid OR, where minimally-invasive procedures are performed routinely in a growing number of hospitals. With the global market for minimally-invasive procedures expected to double between 2012 and 2019, likely giving rise to a commensurate increase in those procedures, interest in HAIs in the hybrid OR won’t abate anytime soon. How can facilities combat infection in this surgical environment?

“The most significant way in which hospitals can help curb infection within the hybrid OR is to consider the physical orientation of the room’s angiography system,” he continued, adding that “a system that is fixed to the floor of the hybrid OR, as opposed to mounted on the ceiling or moving across the floor, is the best design choice to help reduce HAIs. Because infection in hybrid ORs is frequently attributed to an obstruction of air flow from the ceiling, a ceiling-mounted angiography system is not desirable. Floor-moving angiography systems also are problematic, as they can spread infectious material across the floor.”