Three Key Benefits of Integrating Surgical Video Recording Into Your Operating Rooms

The current clinical standard requires surgeons to document their procedures retrospectively. This practice may lead to oversight of critical data while also taking valuable time away from patient care, which is a far more efficient allocation of the surgeon’s time. While surgical videos are becoming more common, their potential to improve certain practices such as surgical training, outcomes assessment, and quality assurance, has yet to be capitalized. Let’s dive deeper into these advantages of utilizing surgical videos.

Enhanced Assessment of Surgical Outcomes

Surgical videos have been gaining increasing interest as an objective and factual data source, capturing intraoperative events accurately, thus decreasing the risk of human bias. In fact, studies have found a link between superior intraoperative technical performance (as measured by surgical videos) and improved short-term postoperative outcomes.

This type of data records provides surgeons continuous access to key patient data for better documentation of the patient outcomes and detailed assessment of their post-operative care. In cases where recovery stagnates, surgical videos become invaluable tools for evaluating contributing factors, allowing for proper analysis and better understanding of the link between surgical decision-making and patient outcomes. ?

Diversified Training and Education of Surgical Residents

Surgical videos present a rich source of data that can benefit physicians at any stage of their training and education. Evidence suggests that the ability to review recorded surgeries allows clinicians to reflect on their performance in a focused educational setting, beyond the operating rooms.

This is especially the case for surgical residents who will gain valuable knowledge via surgery streaming, especially for camera-powered procedures such as laparoscopic and endoscopic surgery. Accordingly, residents will get better exposure to a variety of procedures, which they might not have the opportunity to witness firsthand.

More importantly, research indicates that surgical video review found correlation between surgical skill and patient outcomes, with evidence supporting the use of “video-coaching” to “expedite progression through surgical learning curves, understand surgical errors, and improve surgical performance.”

Improved Assurance of Surgical Quality

The advantages of using surgical videos extend to the assessment of the surgical skills and assurance of surgical quality. Research suggests that there is also a lack of standardized assessment of residents’ surgical skills, with their competencies being generally based on subjective rather than objective assessments.?

As the surgical practice evolves through the adoption of innovative technologies, leading to varying techniques and effectively varying surgical quality, there is also a growing need for an unbiased way of measuring the surgeons’ progress and quality.?

Likewise, surgical quality assurance is vital for enhancing the quality of patient care. By providing an objective look into surgical skills, video recordings help uphold high standards within the surgical practice.

Digitize Your ORs With WayLink?

If your organization is seeking solutions to strengthen its digital transformation with adoption of surgical videos, consider exploring our intelligent surgical video and data platform WayLink?, which can be further expanded with additional client-specific apps.

WayLink? is designed to streamline the integration of surgical videos and data into operating rooms as it captures and securely stores surgical videos to the cloud for easy access and review. Its most prominent features include live streaming and recording of procedures, inviting users to live and upcoming cases, sharing past recordings, and adding bookmarks to key surgical events. These features may be further upgraded with our AI-powered applications WayApps?.

By incorporating WayLink? into your surgical practices, surgeons will be equipped with a tool for making more informed and timely decisions while also training surgical residents on real-world case examples.

If you are interested to learn more about WayLink? and its wide array of functionalities, contact us at [email protected] or follow our LinkedIn page.