You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Commentary
The smart angiography suite
  1. Dee Zhen Lim1,
  2. Goran Mitreski1,
  3. Julian Maingard2,3,
  4. Numan Kutaiba1,
  5. Nicole Hosking1,
  6. Ashu Jhamb4,
  7. Dinesh Ranatunga1,
  8. Hong Kuan Kok5,6,
  9. Ronil V Chandra2,3,
  10. Mark Brooks1,6,
  11. Christen Barras7,8,
  12. Hamed Asadi1,6
  1. 1 Department of Radiology, Austin Health, Heidelberg, Victoria, Australia
  2. 2 Department of Radiology, Monash Health, Clayton, Victoria, Australia
  3. 3 Faculty of Medicine Nursing and Health Sciences, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia
  4. 4 Department of Radiology, St Vincent’s Health, Fitzroy, Victoria, Australia
  5. 5 Department of Radiology, Northern Health, Epping, Victoria, Australia
  6. 6 School of Medicine, Deakin University Faculty of Health, Burwood, Victoria, Australia
  7. 7 School of Medicine, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
  8. 8 South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
  1. Correspondence to Dr Dee Zhen Lim, Department of Radiology, Austin Health, Heidelberg, VIC 3084, Australia; deezhenlim{at}gmail.com

https://doi.org/10.1136/neurintsurg-2021-017383

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    Background

    To meet the growing demand for interventional radiology (IR), more hospitals are investing in state-of-the-art angiography suites, but these are expensive investments. Both the initial construction cost and the ongoing operational costs are significant. For health services, it is important to commission an angiography suite that can satisfy both present and future healthcare demands to maximize the value of the initial expenditure and the opportunities provided by this ongoing investment. Smart angiography suites (SAS) could be the solution that future-proof angiography services. Similar to the smart operating theatre, SAS refers to the incorporation of audio-video technology and internet connectivity into the angiography suite.1 SAS has the ability to record high resolution audio-visual data from the angiography suite and stream it to a remote audience at low latency to enable bi-directional communication and collaboration. SAS, alongside other telemedicine concepts, have also gained new-found interest and relevance in light of the global coronavirus pandemic and the travel restrictions associated with this. We reviewed the current literature to provide an overview of the SAS, its potential, and associated legal and ethical considerations.

    SAS solutions

    For hospitals, SAS can be as rudimentary as a webcam or as advanced as a comprehensive commercial solution such as Olympus MedPrescence, Proximie, Tegus Medical, Sony Nucleus or InTouch Health VisitOR. In general, commercial solutions will include audio-video equipment setup, internet streaming and broadcasting setup, and an end-user viewing software. Most commercial solutions are compatible with pre-existing equipment (vendor neutral) (see figure 1 for an example solution). Different solutions also offer varying features of different video layouts, video freezing, telestration with or without augmented reality, integration with picture archiving and communication system, and security. The cost of a commercial SAS solution varies with each company offering a different type of license.

    Figure 1

    An example of a smart angiography suite solution, from …

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Contributors DZL and GM are responsible for manuscript drafting and revision. JM, NK, NH contributed significantly to the study conception including the setup of smart angiography suite at different hospitals, as well as manuscript revision. AJ, DR, HKK, RVC, MB and CB all contributed to critical manuscript revision, including the response to reviewer document. HA is the overall project supervisor, who first conceptualized the paper and critically revised the manuscript before giving his approval for final publication.

    • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.