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Proximie has archived 80,000 individual surgical views, making it the only resource of its kind on the planet. Surgeons, healthcare teams and medical device companies are using this rich database to help hone their performance today, but it’s how this data will be used in the future that stands to revolutionise the way care is delivered.
With more than 95% of all surgeries taking place on Proximie recorded, the database provides a unique tapestry of technique, insight, workflow, team interaction and operative detail, laying the groundwork for AI computer vision algorithms that will ultimately help to build more predictive health models in the future.
To date, Proximie’s archive encompasses 100,000 hours of high quality video, audio and device data stored on its platform, each hour ultimately helping to write the code for better informed, digitally connected healthcare ecosystems. All of this is possible thanks to our collaboration with health systems, hospitals and industry partners - each applying their expertise to making the archive as valuable as possible.
This is the forefront of the AI revolution: harnessing the power of OR data to build a catalyst for digitally-enhanced healthcare that optimises efficiency, performance and outcomes.
The Challenge: an expensively assembled, disparate and dysfunctional landscape
The data in today’s OR is too analogue, siloed across different devices and technologies. It’s isolated, fragmented and unstandardised - and it’s only when this data is connected that it becomes a rich archive that can inform better decision-making.
The rapidly-evolving surgical landscape has filled ORs with groundbreaking technologies across monitoring and robotics, each of which generates a wealth of valuable data about patients’ vital signs, movement of instruments and the physical layout of the surgical field. However, each piece of equipment operates in isolation, creating a fragmented record of any surgical procedure.
Lack of standardisation is an issue in that the data from each device will be collected, formatted and stored in a variety of ways, further compounding the difficulty of combining data from different sources into a holistic understanding of what occurs in the OR.
The overall effect is of trying to assemble a complex jigsaw puzzle with missing and incompatible pieces. Proximie’s platform makes it possible to integrate all device data from a procedure into a single record alongside video and audio data, telling the story of every action and interaction that has taken place during a procedure from multiple angles, shedding light on the chain of cause and effect within the OR to aid in continuous learning alongside optimisation and development of the surgical craft.
Laying the foundations for creating the common language
Proximie’s platform provides a ‘common language’ that combines surgical data, device data and ambient data - creating a holistic recording of procedures that unlocks the potential of currently fragmented OR data.
With ambient video and audio capture taking the lead, metrics like room utilisation, turnaround times, inactive turnaround times, team interaction and even infection related factors like door opening provide a comprehensive view of the surgical workflow as a whole. We can start to identify and understand the variables affecting OR productivity and patient outcomes, then compare and benchmark them at scale across different procedures and different settings to achieve a truly comprehensive and consistent picture of what best practice looks like.
Proximie is aiming to combine this data with the power of AI applications, which thrive on precisely the sort of huge data sets that can be gathered from the OR; data that can be analysed in real-time to provide actionable insights, including workflow automation. Through constantly learning and evolving, AI algorithms become extremely adept at identifying patterns and anomalies, or even in predicting potential complications before they occur - leading to improved patient outcomes and a proactive approach to surgery.
The standardised ‘common language’ of the data set is what makes it possible for AI to analyse information captured of every action taken and every device used during a procedure - and a digitally connected OR running Proximie sorts, stores and integrates all of this data into a single source of truth.
A single source of truth; infinite opportunities for development
Proximie’s four video source feeds provide a multi-angle view of the OR, ambiently capturing the right data at the right time from the right devices - so that no aspect of any procedure goes unrecorded, unmeasured or unseen.
These feeds are accessible from anywhere and the platform is hardware agnostic, so unlike point solutions, Proximie is highly scalable and customisable. Proximie’s cloud platform is built on an open architecture in order to drive interoperability between current and future technologies in an intuitive, easy-to-use fashion - paving the way to seamlessly integrate innovations such as machine learning (ML), neural language processing (NLP), computer vision (CV) and context-aware computing.
Proximie’s vendor-neutral approach means we provide a software development kit (SDK), or ‘white label’, for third parties to build on the platform. The SDK is built to run on any device, regardless of size, and has full access to Proximie’s private cloud infrastructure using a single tenancy base - making it easy to exchange data or make calls to other systems. The platform is built from the ground up to facilitate more seamless collaboration, and making third party development as straightforward as possible is an integral part of making it possible to tailor Proximie for every action, every insight and every way of working.
A new standard for the future: AI in every OR
The data we collect is crucial to tackling the global healthcare challenges of productivity, workforce shortages and patient safety. Data allows us to peel back the layers and understand how complex health systems work - where they go right and wrong, and how they can be improved in ways we’ve never had available before.
In the very near future, real-time data analysis, powered by AI, will become commonplace in hospitals, guiding surgical decisions, optimising workflows, and personalising patient care. At Proximie, we understand that every patient, surgeon, and procedure is unique - and our vision is not to measure and standardise the performance of medical professionals, but to empower surgeons, teams and healthcare systems with the insights they need to make the most out of the opportunities for more efficient workflows.
With the power of data and AI working in tandem, we unlock the potential of connected, smarter operating rooms. And the time to act is now: to lay the digital foundations of optimising, archiving and analysing OR data today, so we can unlock the potential of AI in surgery tomorrow.
