The next step: intelligent digital assistance for clinical operating rooms

Abstract

With the emergence of new technologies, the surgical working environment becomes increasingly complex and comprises many medical devices that have to be taken cared of. However, the goal is to reduce the workload of the surgical team to allow them to fully focus on the actual surgical procedure. Therefore, new strategies are needed to keep the working environment manageable. Existing research projects in the field of intelligent medical environments mostly concentrate on workflow modeling or single smart features rather than building up a complete intelligent environment. In this article, we present the concept of intelligent digital assistance for clinical operating rooms (IDACO), providing the surgeon assistance in many different situations before and during an ongoing procedure using natural spoken language. The speech interface enables the surgeon to concentrate on the surgery and control the technical environment at the same time, without taking care of how to interact with the system. Furthermore, the system observes the context of the surgery and controls several devices autonomously at the appropriate time during the procedure.Keywords: intelligent operating assistance; natural spoken language; operating room of the future (ORF); surgical environment; voice interaction system.

Automatic speech recognition in the operating room – An essential contemporary tool or a redundant gadget? A survey evaluation among physicians in form of a qualitative study

“…A disproportion between desire and reality in the application of ASR is hereby shown. Coupled to the fact that the basic technical requirements for an intelligent ASR are available, even in noisy environments, it is assumed that an ASR-controlled operating theatre is not far from becoming a reality [ 8 , 12 ].…”

“…Among medical professionals, ASR is commonly used to convert speech into text for data entries and has already been sufficiently tested in a mobile environment. Nevertheless, it has not been established as an indispensable tool for command control in the operating room (OR) [ 6 , 7 ] despite the implementation of basic concepts [ 8 ] and technical requirements in the OR [ 9 , 10 ].…”

Surgery 3.0, artificial intelligence and the next-generation surgeon

“…The surgical robot of the future will not simply filter out a surgeon's tremor, or zoom in stereoscopically on an area of interest, but could provide a degree of computational precision that is simply not possible otherwise. This will range from intelligent digital assistants, medical versions of Alexa or Siri, providing an instant verbal response to queries, to providing augmented overlay of solid organ tumours, resection margins and vital structures by amalgamating preoperative imaging with on‐table anatomy. Operating theatre lights, insufflation pressures, theatre temperature, table tilt and height could all be controlled through AI.…”

Clinical Desire for an Artificial Intelligence–Based Surgical Assistant System: Electronic Survey–Based Study

“…Thus, an automated robotic surgical system that is better than the current master-slave approach may be expected to reduce human error and thereby improve the quality of surgery. Up to now, relevant studies have mainly focused on the development of robots capable of performing short surgical tasks, such as knot tie and needle insertion [ 8 , 9 ], and the application of voice interaction technology during surgery may be one of the crucial elements that should be developed in an AI-based surgical assistant system [ 10 - 12 ].…”