Innovations in the field of integrated OR workstations, which many of the medical technology manufacturers at MEDICA 2011 focus on, are a prime example of a more interdisciplinary mindset in medical care.

In a typical operating room there are normally a plethora of devices made by different manufacturers. However, operating individual devices requires a lot attention and is very distracting for the surgeon, who is confronted by more complex tasks and is pressed for time anyway. In conventional OR organization it is therefore common to use assistants, also known as floaters, who operate the devices as instructed by the doctor conducting the operation. Integrated OR workstations make the entire process much more efficient, as they allow the surgeon to control a wide range of devices such as endoscopes, ultrasonic surgical devices, OR tables and lights or even telemedicine modalities that are connected to a central touch screen via an interface. The user interfaces of these integrated devices are accurately reproduced on the central control unit, meaning that the surgeon has no new control structures to get used to. There are even new developments that allow the devices connected to the system to be controlled by voice control via a microphone. In a nutshell, this gives the surgeon more time to concentrate on the actual operation itself and the cost of employing floaters is done away with thanks to this innovative technological solution.


Health IT goes mobile

The main aim of medical IT is to make processes simple and optimize the availability of all relevant information for the treatment process at the point of care. The exhibitors at MEDICA will also focus on solutions relating to this topic. The key topics at MEDICA 2011 so far are Mobile Computing, IT security and inter-sectoral networking using appropriate systems for communication between the inpatient and outpatient sector.

For example, the doctor's spiral notebook could well be a thing of the past soon, as tablet PCs and smartphones are becoming increasingly popular in the medical world. Not only can the doctor be contacted using these devices, he can also use a wide variety of applications (apps) to access information of all kinds from the hospital information system (HIS), be it results from the lab, medication or schedule management, and handling the devices and apps is as easy as could be. There are also apps designed specifically for patients that are used by service providers as a service tool. This allows them to inform a patient about the necessary pre-ops before they are due to have an operation, for example, or to give them information on the possible course of therapy in words they can understand.

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