There is incredibly high demand for collaboration during medical procedures – whether it’s a Cardiologist advising a more junior physician on a complex procedure, a renowned surgeon training other colleagues on a technique, a medical device company rolling out a new product, or a medical device rep providing product support during a surgery.

There’s no question that collaboration is critical to develop techniques and products for the advancement of medicine, and in fact, doctors have come to rely on in-person collaboration, especially as medical devices become more complex. Yet, the industry has long grappled with challenges associated with in-person support – from infection risk to non-stop travel and high costs. When COVID-19 disrupted the ability to travel and limited in-person healthcare, it put an additional spotlight on these issues and accelerated the need for change.

The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working

In a single day, a rep could travel between multiple hospitals or multiple states, spending more than half their day in cars, trains, planes and hospital lobbies, instead of providing critical technical expertise to physicians. Far too often, procedures are delayed or even cancelled because a rep cannot physically get to a hospital in time, or the rep arrives at the hospital in time, but the surgeon is delayed in another case and the rep is forced to spend hours waiting for the procedure.

Getting medical experts into the procedure room in the first place requires millions of hours and dollars spent coordinating travel, aligning schedules and preparing to safely enter a procedure room.

Telemedicine in the Operating Room

The use of telemedicine has soared since the start of the pandemic and it’s no surprise that demand for operating room solutions have increased. We are starting to see leaders embrace this shift, including the CEO of one of the world’s leading medical device manufacturers who said, ‘the new normal is exciting,’ adding that ‘anything that can be done remotely and virtual is preferred.’

As a MedTech sales rep for over 20 years, I agree that the ‘new normal’ is exciting, but I also know first-hand that using a video-only solution during a procedure doesn’t equate to being there in person. I’m proud to work for a company that is pioneering an integrated software and hardware solution that seamlessly puts remote medical professionals “in the room”, without having to be physically present.

Avail’s Procedural TelemedicineTM System is the first and only technology built to meet the specific needs of physicians and medical experts for remote collaboration during procedures, clinical education or training. The Avail System consists of a portable Console used by surgeons in the operating room, paired with a versatile app for reps remotely supporting their customer’s procedure. The console has high definition audio visual, as well as multiple pan-tilt-zoom cameras and external imaging equipment. Users can also split the screens to view inputs side-by-side, annotate, freeze frames and more.

With a proprietary blend of hardware and software, the Avail System ensures a seamless, consistent and reliable experience, including the highest quality audio visual and remote-controlled cameras with 30X zoom. Our technology is intuitive and easy to use making it easy to adopt as part of daily procedure room activities. While physicians “in the room” benefit from ethernet connectivity and tailored hardware, reps can use their own laptops or iPads from anywhere.

The Avail System is supported by the Avail Portal, a secure online platform used by our growing network of medical industry experts and physicians. The Portal allows users to easily manage schedules, update availability in real-time and collaborate at the click of a button. The Portal also provides tools to support medical device rep, particularly those in the field, to better run their remote activities and ultimately their business, including the ability to manage relationships, track historical utilization and improve time management.

Since the start of the pandemic, Avail’s Procedural TelemedicineTM solution has been used by multiple specialties in an increasing number of procedures. Case examples include:

A medical device rep was able to provide technical support for a last-minute emergency aortic dissection procedure in a situation where the rep wouldn’t have made it to the hospital in time to support physically in-person.
Medical device training programs provided for physicians, medical students and other industry rep streamed live from an orthopedic cadaver lab.

For too long, medical information sharing, and collaboration have depended on in-person communication. Just as the COVID-19 pandemic has caused us to rethink nearly all aspects of our daily life, so too has it caused us to rethink how we deliver healthcare.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, a chronic shortage of imaging equipment and skilled radiologists meant that hospitals had been plagued with a growing patient backlog for years. When the pandemic hit at the start of this year, it considerably exacerbated the issue.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the closure of non-essential radiology services, with over 850,000 MRI and CT scans still outstanding in the UK, meaning patients waiting over two months for a consultation and upwards of 30 days to receive results.

Independent market researcher IDTechEx has published a recent report exploring how image recognition in Artificial Intelligence (AI) represents a potential solution to the problem.
Using AI software

The report highlights that AI technology can help to compensate for the lack of qualified staff by extending the responsibility of diagnosis beyond just experts and enables trained radiologists of all levels to approach the analysis process with the same tools and skillset so that more resources can be utilised simultaneously.

In addition, AI accelerates the detection of abnormalities from medical scans by greatly diminishing reading times – sometimes by over 90% – which allows doctors to examine cases faster and see patients sooner.

The key issue is that as of November 2020, AI may not be widely implemented enough throughout hospitals to make a difference. Currently, most hospitals either use outdated computer-assisted diagnostics tools or only perform visual checks on medical scans. According to the IDTechEx report, uptake of image recognition AI in medical diagnostics currently sits between 1-20% depending on the disease area, and the current level of adoption of AI may be too low to help alleviate the patient backlog.

The extent to which AI can help address the patient backlog also depends on the way that the software is deployed. AI companies requiring the installation of hardware in hospitals may experience major delays in this time of social distancing. On the other hand, cloud-based solutions enable rapid roll-out, so AI companies can deploy software very quickly if needed.

Despite its potential, however, AI has not yet reached enough hospitals to make a real difference and adoption must rise quickly for this technology to make a true impact. Uptake will rise quicker than it would have if COVID-19 had never occurred, but it is likely to remain a gradual process over the coming months and years.

As a second wave of Coronavirus cases surge across Europe, UVD Robots and Blue Ocean Robotics, the manufacturer of the autonomous disinfecting robot equipped with UV-C light, announced that it was selected by the European Commission directorate-Generale for Communications Networks, Content and Technology to supply 200 of its autonomous disinfecting robots to European Union hospitals fighting against the Coronavirus. UVD Robots’ tender ranked first in the European Commission’s review of numerous disinfecting robots evaluating technical excellence and maturity of technology, quality of approach in deployment, response time in technical support and maintenance, and overall value. UVD Robots are now being deployed in the first 10+ EU countries with more to follow.

In a statement President of the European Commission Ursula Von Der Leyen said: “With EU funds, the European Commission is buying 200 disinfection robots, which will be delivered to hospitals across Europe to help disinfect patient rooms. We do all we can to support hospitals and patients in these difficult times. And more will follow.”

“We are thrilled that our UVD Robots were selected by the European Commission to help fight against the spread of Covid-19 in hospitals across Europe, which we believe to be the largest order of service robots of its kind,” said Per Juul Nielsen, CEO of UVD Robots. “We were the first robot in this category and have set the standard for autonomous UVC disinfection in the world. The size and breadth of this order validates the effectiveness of our robots, and we plan to deploy them as quickly as possible to help protect healthcare workers and patients, to combat the spread of Covid-19.”

Unlike many stationary disinfection robots, the UVD Robot is a mobile, fully autonomous robot, that integrates UVC light to disinfect against viruses and bacteria not only on surfaces, but the air as well, providing a fully comprehensive infection control and prevention solution. UVD Robots enable hospitals to reduce disease transmission by killing 99.99 percent of bacteria and microorganisms within approximately 10 minutes in a patient room. The robots have been rolled out to more than 60 countries worldwide.

“Being selected by the European Commission means a great deal to us. We are focusing on helping fight the spread of Covid-19 while also strengthening the prevention measures against infections overall in operating theatres, intensive care units, cancer departments and similar in hospitals,” said Dr. Claus Risager, CEO of Blue Ocean Robotics and Chairman of UVD Robots. “As the world’s leading autonomous UV-C mobile robot company with more than 75% of the world market, with this order we are going even further to actively help prevent healthcare staff, patients and relatives at hospitals across the EU from being infected by COVID-19 at a critical moment when cases are surging.”

Excellent results at hospitals in Croatia and Italy

Recently, Marin Repustic, Director Assistant for Quality of Healthcare at the General Hospital “Dr.Ivo Pedisic” Sisak in Croatia deployed a UVD Robot for five months in six of the hospital’s fifteen operating theaters. A sample survey was performed to test its effectiveness, sampling surfaces and furniture in the operating theater following a 15-20 minute disinfection by a UVD Robot. The result showed no existence of these organisms after the UVD Robot, compared to micro-resistant organisms being present in eight out of ten disinfections done mechanically and manually.

“This was an excellent result,” noted Mr. Repustic. “We reduced the time we spent disinfecting by 1.5 hours, freeing up our staff to focus on more important tasks while also enabling us to have a higher turn-over in surgeries.”

When Covid-19 hit Croatia in March 2020, Mr. Repustic and his team moved the UVD Robot to its infectious disease department that treats Covid-19 patients. While the hospital has 48 Covid-patients with 9 in the ICU, only one staff member tested positive for the virus since the outbreak began. By comparison, with 1100 hospital staff members in total, 37 employees working in other departments where the UVD Robot is not being deployed tested positive. This data represents infection status as of mid November 2020.

Mr. Repustic concluded, “I’m convinced the robot played a very big role in keeping our employees in our infectious disease unit safe from the virus.”

Christiano Huscher, chief surgeon at Gruppo Poloclinico Abano, which operates private hospitals in Italy, also noted: “Before we received the UVD robot, six of the hospital’s doctors had been infected with COVID-19. Since we started using the robot to disinfect, we have not had a single case of corona among doctors, nurses or patients.”

In addition to the healthcare sector, the UVD Robots are now also increasingly deployed within hotels, railways, airports, shopping malls, food companies, cruise ships, pharmaceutical companies, office complexes and many more across the globe, meeting new and heightened expectations for safety and cleanliness.

In spring semester 2021, students in the University of Tennessee, Knoxville’s College of Nursing will get firsthand experience testing out a new virtual health care app designed by a team of faculty and students from across campus.

Lisa Merritt, clinical assistant professor of nursing, and her collaborative team at UT—Xueping Li, professor of industrial and systems engineering in the Tickle College of Engineering; Cary Staples, professor of design in the College of Architecture and Design; and Paul Hauptman, professor and dean of the Graduate School of Medicine—designed a mobile application to simulate a virtual health care encounter.

This multiplatform V-Visit Sim app is an educational app developed for health care educators that replicates a virtual visit between a provider and a patient.

Virtual visits, which are on the rise due to COVID-19, are encounters that occur between a patient and a health care provider without being in the same room. Patients receive care for health problems from home through video, phone, text messaging, or video chat.

“The Centers for Disease Control has recommended that health care providers explore alternatives to face-to-face visits in an effort to reduce unnecessary visits and prevent transmission of COVID-19,” said Merritt. “Virtual visits can advance those efforts and have great potential to enhance patient experience, improve health outcomes, and control health care cost.”

“Simulation is used in health care education to give learners the opportunity to practice skills without putting patients at risk,” Merritt said. “The pandemic has accelerated the need for virtual visits, and the development of this virtual simulation app provides participants a simulated experience in performing a virtual visit.”

The app can be used on a computer, tablet, or smartphone and was developed for nurse practitioner students, medical students, physician assistant students, and others working to become advanced practice providers.

“Research shows that students have positive perceptions toward mobile learning and feel that using their mobile device for education enhances their learning,” Merritt continued. “It makes learning more portable and accessible.”

The project is funded by the University of Tennessee Research Foundation. Merritt and her team used some of the funds to work with students in UT’s School of Design to improve the readability and usability of the app.

“These students have done a fabulous job making the app more attractive to the eye and user-friendly,” Merritt stated. “This collaboration has provided the opportunity for students to work with faculty from other colleges and has enhanced their learning experience.”

Allie Torres-Lopez, a junior in the College of Architecture and Design, worked as a student designer on the app.
Currently in its beta version, the V-Visit Sim app provides learners with the opportunity to improve clinical reasoning skills through exposure to 35 clinical scenarios in an asynchronous online environment.

“When the opportunity first arose, the project was to create video tutorials for this platform. However, this project developed more than we had ever thought possible in such a short amount of time,” Torres-Lopez said. “I truly believe that the V-Visit Sim App will become a helpful resource for the future of health care education.”

Merritt will be using the new application in the College of Nursing during spring semester to provide experience with virtual visits for family, pediatric, and mental health nurse practitioner students.

“The goal is for learners to collect appropriate information from the history and virtual physical exam via chat messages, images, and video and develop a correct diagnosis and management plan,” Merritt said.

Nutanix, a leader in private cloud, hybrid and multicloud computing, announced the healthcare industry findings of its third annual Enterprise Cloud Index Report, measuring healthcare organizations’ plans for adopting private, hybrid and public clouds. The findings point to a growing trend within the sector: with more than two-thirds (70%) of respondents reporting that COVID-19 has caused IT to be viewed more strategically within their organizations and the pandemic has accelerated digital transformation that is likely to shape the future of healthcare.

As COVID-19 hit, healthcare organizations looked for ways to effectively support the skyrocketing technology demands of the COVID-19 pandemic—from enabling remote work, to implementing telehealth practices, to supporting an increasing patient load. As a result, they sought out IT solutions that could support their organizations’ growing needs and support their digital transformation. With digital transformation top of mind, the healthcare industry is more bullish than any other sector about adopting a hybrid IT model, with 95% of respondents agreeing that hybrid is their ideal choice.

Today, more than half of healthcare respondents have increased their public cloud (56%) and hybrid cloud (51%) use and nearly half (46%) have invested more in private cloud environments in an effort to quickly provide new work-from-home employees with access to IT resources. While 77% of healthcare respondents previously had some employees working remotely one year ago, that percentage has increased to 93% this year since the onset of the pandemic.

The future of healthcare is dependent on decommissioning of legacy architecture: Currently, more healthcare companies run exclusively traditional, non-cloud-enabled datacenters (27%) than any other industry, compared to 18% globally. Over the next five years, however, healthcare organizations plan to shrink that gap with an expected 21-percentage-point drop in legacy datacenter installations and a corresponding 32-point increase in hybrid cloud deployments.

Healthcare organizations look to hyperconverged infrastructure to support IT modernization and pave the way to hybrid cloud: Hyperconverged infrastructure is often seen as the basis for a hybrid cloud infrastructure, the HCI of the next decade, as it helps accelerate cloud adoption by sharply reducing the time it takes to build the software-defined infrastructure necessary to support private cloud, while also providing the scalability of cloud technology. About 64% of healthcare respondents say they’ve either fully deployed HCI or are in the process of doing so, significantly outpacing the approximately 50% of global respondents who are using or deploying hyperconverged infrastructure.

Security, privacy, and compliance pose a significant challenge to the industry’s digital transformation: 58% of healthcare respondents described security as a significant challenge, compared to 51% of global respondents. Healthcare respondents also ranked cost control (45%) and business continuity (45%) more often as significant challenges than any other industry.

As the healthcare industry evolves, cost advantages will be the main gating factor for IT infrastructure deployments: All industries, including healthcare, indicated that security, privacy, and compliance solution strengths were highly important to infrastructure decision-making.

“Healthcare organizations are in a critical phase of expediting their digital transformations to better meet patient and healthcare worker needs, all this jump started by COVID-19,” said Cheryl Rodenfels, Healthcare Strategist at Nutanix. “While IT leaders agree that hybrid cloud is a key enabler of this transformation, healthcare organizations need to identify IT solutions to help them on this journey, from investing in HCI-powered private clouds, to finding ways to effectively bridge their private and public cloud environments while keeping security and cost top of mind.”

The 2020 respondent base spanned multiple industries, business sizes, and the following geographies: the Americas; Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA); and the Asia-Pacific (APJ) region.

Nutanix is a global leader in cloud software and a pioneer in hyperconverged infrastructure solutions, making computing invisible anywhere. Organizations around the world use Nutanix software to leverage a single platform to manage any app at any location at any scale for their private, hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Learn more about Azure Migration Services and Office 365 Email Migration Service.