Doctors may soon be using a system in the operating room that recognises hand gestures as commands to tell a computer to browse and display medical images of the patient during surgery.
Surgeons routinely need to review medical images and records during surgery, but stepping away from the operating table and touching a keyboard and mouse can delay the procedure and increase the risk of spreading infection-causing bacteria, said Juan Pablo Wachs, an assistant professor of industrial engineering at Purdue University.
“One of the most ubiquitous pieces of equipment in US surgical units is the computer workstation, which allows access to medical images before and during surgery,” he said. “However, computers and their peripherals are difficult to sterilise, and keyboards and mice have been found to be a source of contamination. Also, when nurses or assistants operate the keyboard for the surgeon, the process of conveying information accurately has proven cumbersome and inefficient since spoken dialogue can be time-consuming and leads to frustration and delays in the surgery.”
Findings from the research were detailed in a paper published in December in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.
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