From the April 2013 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine


Strange bedfellows
Hybrid ORs live up to their name in several ways. They’re built for procedures that require multidisciplinary teams which may include radiologists, cardiologists and anesthesiologists, among others.

But they also require more collaboration and crosspollination between different technologies and OEMs. As their jobs become more difficult, cardiologists expect seamless integration between different systems and companies.
The medical device industry is notoriously resistant to standardization, but it will have to get past that very quickly as cath labs continue to require more complex technology, experts warn.

“They’ll have to develop common languages so that if I’m using a Siemens X-ray machine or a Philips ultrasound machine I’ll be able to pull both data into a kind of common workstation, fuse it, and co-register it,” says Dr. Gary Gershony, director of cardiovascular research, education & technology at John Muir Health and Cardiovascular Institute.“Whoever’s able to do that best and soonest will become the market leader.”

Indeed, the industry is moving quickly to develop partnerships and acquisitions that will help it branch out into intravascular and endovascular (read: minimally invasive) imaging. Intravascular imaging and ultrasound company Volcano Corporation has already developed partnerships with Siemens and other major manufacturers. And in November 2012 Volcano bought Sync-Rx Ltd, an Israeli company that develops advanced software for transcatheter cardiovascular interventions.

But OEMs aren’t the only ones having to make room for new players. While the rooms are theoretically meant to be shared among specialists, this is often not the case in practice. Cardiologists tend to monopolize the room, but this is not a sustainable trend, say experts. “In order for the hybrid OR concept to work, it has to be a universal operating room. It’s simply not cost effective otherwise,” says GE Healthcare’s McIff.

Other specialties such as interventional oncology are also developing less invasive surgical techniques that must be performed in a hybrid OR. “There’s a trend towards procedures that can deliver treatment to specific region in the body instead of targeting the entire body through chemo or other methods,” says Richard Fabian, vice president of imaging systems marketing at Philips Healthcare.

In the future, cardiologists can expect to share their hybrid rooms with interventional oncologists, neurologists and even gastroenterologists. But these specialists aren’t just going to share space. They must have input on how the hybrid room is designed and laid out, what equipment to buy, and how the room’s resources will be allocated. By necessity, the room cannot look like a cardiologist’s lab — it must be a space that serves multiple, sometimes radically different disciplines.

April 2013 Magazine

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