Mentice and Siemens Healthineers bring a virtual patient to the angio suite

Siemens Healthineers, a leading medical technology company and Mentice AB, a world leader in simulation solutions for endovascular therapies, announced the collaboration to fully integrate Mentice’s VIST Virtual Patient into the Artis icono angiography system from Siemens Healthineers. The VIST Virtual Patient thus becomes a fully integrated simulation solution for the angio-suite. The global partnership between the two companies will allow interventional radiologists, neuroradiologists, and cardiologists to perform vascular and cardiac interventions on a virtual patient inside the angio-suite.

“With an ever-increasing complexity of new interventional procedures, our customers strive to acquire and retain procedural skills while optimizing their performance and improving patient safety. The Artis icono angiography system equipped with a VIST® Virtual Patient will make it possible to train new interventional procedures directly in the angio room,” said Dr. Michael Scheuering, Head of Interventional Radiology at Siemens Healthineers.

“The VIST Virtual Patient integration into the Artis icono angiography system will open new opportunities for clinical teams to improve their overall performance, drive operational efficiency, and more importantly, help improve patient outcomes. By using the Artis icono system on the VIST Virtual Patient, clinicians may now explore new interventional procedure methods and experience the use of new medical devices while reducing clinical training on actual patients and eliminating exposure to radiation,” said Göran Malmberg, CEO at Mentice. “The VIST Virtual Patient provides an immersive, high-fidelity, simulation-based environment accessible right from the Artis icono system making this integration one of the most sophisticated options in the field of endovascular skills acquisition.”

Interventionalists may now perform simulated cardiac and vascular procedures by using the Artis icono controls to angulate the C-arm, move the angiography table, use the foot pedals, and review fluoroscopic images on the Artis icono screens while deploying actual medical devices in a radiation-free environment. The integrated solution will allow clinicians to perform procedures either by using Mentice’s extensive library of patient cases or by importing actual MR and CT patient data for case training and rehearsal. Transesophageal echocardiography (TEE), intravascular ultrasound (IVUS), optical coherence tomography (OCT), and fractional flow reserve (FFR) procedures are also available.