Solutions. Cases

Remote Real-time Laparoscopic Consultation Using DistanceDoc and MedRecorder

remote laparoscopic

As healthcare costs and complexity are rising, and supply of physicians and medical specialists is diminishing, most institutions do not possess the capital and assets to provide specialists on hand. Therefore, Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan started looking for ways to allocate expert resources across multiple environments and locations so that the lack of resources available does not lead to the diminished quality of patient care.

Laparoscopic-assisted surgery provides a minimally invasive technique and a wide range of operations spanning many subspecialties can be performed with camera guidance. It has many potential applications for traumatic as well as non-traumatic abdominal injuries. The advantages are multiple as laparoscopy allows for organ-specific diagnosis and treatment provision, thus avoiding unnecessary laparotomy, minimizing morbidity, shortening hospital stay, and hastening recovery for the patient. The learning curve for the technique is quite high yet because the two-dimensional working field requires some familiarization. Due to the cost and intricacy of operating the laparoscopic instruments and tower, training surgeons are finding it difficult to practice skills in a nonsurgical setting. Although some hospitals now have laparoscopic simulators for trainees, most institutions do not due to the high costs.

With the difficulty of training surgeons in laparoscopic procedures, the ability to inexpensively teleconference with an expert physician becomes highly valuable. Telesurgical consultation and telementoring provide means by which a patient can be treated at a distance by allowing an expert to educate, assist, and supervise the operating surgeon. DistanceDoc™ and MedRecorder™ are used by doctors and physicians at Henry Ford Medical System in Detroit. They offer the ability to create a low-cost and effective teleconsultation solution, giving a consulting physician a clear and accurate real-time video feed of the intraoperative situation using laparoscopic cameras. Using DistanceDoc, the images from a laparoscopic camera can be captured and sent directly to the health care professional, whether he/she is in the next room or on another continent.

Genuine hospital laparoscopes offer the advantage of having in-house, sterile means by which a video image can be captured real-time without the additional expense of purchasing expensive camera equipment for operative situations. Laparoscopic equipment carries an expense, however most major institutions carry them for laparoscopic-assisted surgical procedures anyway, and rarely are all the laparoscopes carried by the hospital in simultaneous use.

When DistanceDoc or MedRecorder are being applied to some working areas, it does not require highly special electronic wiring or extensive cabling. The medical institution's established IT infrastructure is used to connect to and collaborate with any consulting expert desired by the operating surgeon. Additionally, the organization of this system is highly adaptable to a diverse array of situations, with increased implementation convenience and portability over previous methods and practices. By streaming the video over Internet, it has potential to be accessed by technology ranging from lecture hall projectors and desktop workstations to personal digital assistants and smart phones.

This case study is also available in the following languages:

Дистанционное консультирование в реальном времени в ходе лапароскопических процедур с использованием устройств DistanceDoc и Medrecorder
Consulta laparoscópica remota y en tiempo real usando DistanceDoc y MedRecorder

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