The digital enabler of the Operating Room: a look ahead to 2024

Proximie’s CEO and Founder, Dr. Nadine Hachach-Haram FRCS (Plast), BEM, discusses her vision for 2024 and Proximie's unique position at the epicentre of the Operating Room.

The biggest opportunities next year for Proximie…

For Proximie, we are focused on improving productivity and patient safety by creating an operating system for the operating room. By embracing technologies such as AI and machine learning – two of the most exciting technologies set to have a significant impact on healthcare – this goal is now achievable. At Proximie, we can see a 2024 where AI minimises errors, optimises efficiency, and revolutionises patient care and global healthcare accessibility.

I truly believe we are going to see significant strides in the evolution of the once analogue environment of the operating room in 2024, because we simply can’t afford not to. Major challenges face today’s healthcare systems around the world. These include workforce retention, patient safety, increasing demand, either from waiting lists or population growth, and tighter budgets. These challenges are faced by healthcare systems everywhere, not just somewhere. Every healthcare system now effectively needs to do more, with less. But how do we achieve greater productivity in an area of healthcare as analogue as the operating room? By inherently understanding the system and its pain points, we can collectively drive change in any given system. mechanisms must be established to build and scale a resilient medical workforce and find new ways to deliver better care, quicker and more efficiently than ever before. Proximie is really at the forefront of this systemic change in how we collectively deliver healthcare globally.

“I truly believe we are going to see significant strides in the evolution of the once analogue environment of the operating room in 2024, because we simply can’t afford not to.”

At a product-level, we recently announced the launch of our first Software Development Kit (SDK) – a blueprint for the first operating system of the Operating Room (OR). Where previously these medical devices would sit in a dark and siloed environment and would operate on entirely separate infrastructures built by different manufactures, Proximie’s SDK now becomes the central digital conduit to unite the unique powers of every new and existing technology within any given OR.

As we become the operating system of the OR, enabled by our cloud-based infrastructure via interconnectivity with medical devices, robotics, and other tools – we will spur innovation and efficiency across the healthcare ecosystem. In 2024, I can really see Proximie's SDK becoming a catalyst for interoperability in its truest sense, unifying all of these devices under an intuitive and easy to use, co-developed, cloud-based software platform. By bringing this data and analysis together and by playing these insights back into the healthcare systems from which they came, we can truly democratise healthcare - from high-end to one-bed hospitals.

"In 2024, I can really see Proximie's SDK becoming a catalyst for interoperability in its truest sense..."

What healthcare technologies are you most excited about for 2024?

There are so many fantastic innovations that are already having a real-world impact on patient care - from AI’s capacity to provide high-levels of objective insight that improves healthcare performance and in turn improve patient outcomes, to the boom of hugely disruptive robotics systems that are fundamentally changing how surgery is delivered. But the thing that is most exciting from Proximie’s perspective is our place at the epicentre of these new technologies entering the OR. We’re really shifting to becoming the central aggregator of these innovations. Using Proximie, we're laying the foundations and the piping for all of these Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and robotic platforms to really start talking to each other, sharing and collecting data in very meaningful and actionable ways. Our platform is creating the common language between each device, connecting them and indeed the people and processes within any given healthcare setting, together. This in turn is going to help to create automated elements of healthcare - clinicians spend almost half their working day on administrative tasks, with almost 40% of their time with patients spent on entering or retrieving data on the computer - that will free up teams’ time to focus on their patients.

“Our platform is creating the common language between each device, connecting them and indeed the people and processes within any given healthcare setting, together.”

Beyond the important facets of automation, Proximie’s combination of telepresence, content management and data insights is going to become an enabler for more preventative and predictive models of healthcare delivery. From using AI to model polyp recognition or to automate mundane, time consuming but necessary processes, to leveraging past surgeries to inform future ones, Proximie is playing a fundamental role in equipping healthcare teams and medical device organisations with the ability to make rapid and timely interventions, when it matters most.  

In surgery in particular - a very tactile, close, analogue and anchored to one moment in time speciality - we've never had a way to connect, collect and activate surgical data, knowledge and expertise and apply those learnings back into healthcare systems to improve performance.

By leveraging the best of cloud computing, AI, video technology and all of the exciting innovations that are truly changing ORs around the world, we're able to turn these once soiled environments into smart, data-driven ecosystems. It’s all been so decentralised, but the shift towards cloud management of data is driving innovation at scale, enabling clinical teams to monitor and evaluate the entire care journey of patients, from ambulance to surgery, thus improving the continuity of care. This is how we truly democratise healthcare - from high-end hospitals to single-bed rural ones. Through recording, tagging and archiving every single interaction in surgery, we’re ultimately helping to create a sustainable blueprint of surgical performance that can be fed back, via the cloud, into healthcare settings around the world.

As we continue to build our sophisticated digital enterprise solution that integrates devices, data, workflow, people, it's really going to take a coalition of those willing to help us drive this forward in 2024. Individually and through strategic partnerships with data companies, algorithm experts, OEMs and others, Proximie is really building one of the richest engines that aligns with surgeons and healthcare workers around the world, to ultimately help them deliver the best possible care to their patients.

"As we continue to build our sophisticated digital enterprise solution that integrates devices, data, workflow, people, it's really going to take a coalition of those willing to help us drive this forward in 2024."