Closed-loop approach for situation awareness of medical devices and operating room infrastructure

Abstract

Abstract In recent years, approaches for information and control integration in the digital operating room have emerged. A major step towards an intelligent operating room and a cooperative technical environment would be autonomous adaptation of medical devices and systems to the surgical workflow. The OR staff should be freed from information seeking and maintenance tasks. We propose a closed-loop concept integrating workflow monitoring, processing and (semi-)automatic interaction to bridge the gap between OR integration of medical devices and workflow-related information management. Four steps were identified for the implementation of workflow-driven assistance functionalities. The processing steps in the closed loop of workflow-driven assistance could either be implemented with centralized responsible components or in a cooperative agent-based approach. However, both strategies require a common framework and terminology to ensure interoperability between the components, the medical devices (actors) and the OR infrastructure.