Operating Rooms of the Future

Updated 03/29/2004

Baptist Health is bringing the operating room into the digital age. Baptist has partnered with Stryker Endoscopy to bring fully integrated, voice-controlled operating rooms to Jacksonville. These operating rooms, the first of their kind in Northeast Florida, provide surgeons with comprehensive access and control of critical devices in conjunction with networked digital documentation and telemedicine capabilities.

Baptist plans to build i-Suite operating rooms, open-heart surgery i-Suites, gastroesophageal suites and Cysto Suites at Baptist Medical Center. Baptist Medical Center South will also incorporate much of the i-Suites technology in its operating rooms.

Surgeons at Baptist Hospitals will use the new operating rooms for continued advancement of the Minimally Invasive Medicine and Surgery (MIMS) program at Baptist.

"With more than 120 minimally invasive procedures already being performed at Baptist hospitals, we are committed to offering our patients access to surgical methods that result in shorter hospital stays, faster recovery times and lower costs," says A. Hugh Greene, President and CEO of Baptist Health. "Baptist Health is committed to provided the community with the highest level of healthcare using state of-the-art medical technology,"

The i–Suite features equipment that talks, listens, obeys, captures, and displays according to the needs of the surgeon and staff. Surgeons can be transported virtually into operating rooms within the hospital or across the country to provide or obtain instruction or guidance. Patient information is securely and instantly transported across data systems to caregivers and doctors.

"The i-Suite operating rooms and procedural labs we will build will give our physicians the cutting-edge tools needed as medicine moves into the digital age," says Gail Luther, RN, Director of the MIMS program for Baptist Health. "The i-Suites will allow surgeons to expand the number of minimally invasive procedures they perform and enable the addition of new procedures as they are developed."

Operating rooms currently consist of towers of equipment and monitors with wires, connectors and tubes all running from the surgical field and patient back to the towers. Many times surgeons, technicians and nurses have to move towers during a procedure or relocate equipment because of a tight space around the operating table.

The i-Suites take the towers out of the operating rooms, freeing up the rooms from the tubes, wires and connectors that snake their way to the towers and gives surgeons a more open surgical field and easy access to monitors with patient vital signs, digital images and other important information easily readable.

Steven Felger, MD, a general and vascular surgeon with North Florida Surgeons and Chairman of the MIMS Advisory Council at Baptist Health, says the new operating suites are a quantum leap for healthcare in Jacksonville.

"By building sophisticated operating and procedural suites that incorporate equipment and technology rather than add it piecemeal, Baptist is giving surgeons unprecedented control in the operating room," Felger says. "Our patients are going to be the beneficiaries of these advanced technologies in terms of quicker operating times, faster recoveries and improved clinical outcomes." The agreement with Stryker includes the development of a "Dry Lab" where physicians and staff can train on the new equipment and practice procedures before they are utilized in the operating room.