KARL STORZ, Artisight Team Up to Boost OR Efficiency

KARL STORZ United States has begun the U.S. rollout of Pathway.AI, a new tool powered by the Artisight Smart Hospital Platform. By detecting and responding operating room (OR) status changes, Pathway.AI might help reduce turnover times and eliminate many manual tasks, thus enhancing OR efficiency and increasing data accuracy.

“Artisight’s expertise in healthcare AI is the perfect complement to KARL STORZ’s proven abilities in transforming the surgical suite,” said Connie Padden, director, OR1 Technology Integration at KARL STORZ United States. “Bringing the Pathway.AI automation solution to market will allow us both to provide new value to clinicians in the mission-critical OR environment.”

Artisight’s technology uses ambient sensors, microphones, and machine-learning algorithms to monitor and analyze OR workflow activities in real-time. By providing automated capture of operational data, it enables healthcare professionals to streamline processes, prevent delays, and optimize resource utilization. This should result in faster OR turnover, allowing hospitals to potentially accommodate more surgeries and better allocate staff.

“This partnership between Artisight and KARL STORZ represents a pivotal moment in scaling artificial intelligence in healthcare,” Artisight Co-Founder/CEO Andrew Gostine, M.D., stated. “Too often, great artificial intelligence capabilities fail to achieve broad clinical adoption. By combining Artisight’s AI-driven Smart Hospital Platform with KARL STORZ’s global prowess in operating room technologies, we’re reimagining the entire surgical ecosystem, starting with the delivery of operational efficiencies. Our collaboration will empower healthcare providers with real-time insights and automation, allowing them to focus more on patient care and less on clerical tasks.”

“Pathway.AI can detect when a patient exits the room, when cleaning starts and stops, and when the next patient enters,” noted Steve Martin, director, Corporate Operations, OR1 at KARL STORZ United States. “It can then perform user-defined functions at each of these junctures.”

For example, when a patient is wheeled out of the OR, Pathway.AI can automatically send a message to the cleaning staff notifying them that the room is ready for cleaning. At the same time, it can automatically enter a precise timestamp into an electronic medical record (EMR), a task that is typically performed by a busy OR nurse in addition to their patient-care duties.

Pathway.AI is highly customizable and localized to each OR. Localization of the AI algorithm is essential because each institution serves a unique set of patients, and each OR is used for different types of procedures. It allows the system to maximize accuracy and combat model drift and bias. The HIPAA-compliant technology also respects OR sensitivity, applying numerous real-time privacy filters to ensure that all patient and clinician information stays protected.

“Pathway.AI serves as an important step toward a comprehensive, enterprise-wide smart automation solution through the combination of Artisight in patient rooms and clinics and KARL STORZ in the OR,” Martin added. “It’s part of our ongoing effort at KARL STORZ to automate and simplify workflow in the surgical suite as much as possible so that clinicians have more time to spend directly with patients, delivering effective and personalized care—and we’re excited to continue that journey with Artisight.”

For nearly 80 years, KARL STORZ develops endoscopic technology and surgical imaging solutions across virtually all surgical specialties. Its integrated OR solutions are designed to enhance collaboration to improve clinical efficiency and outcomes inside the hospital and other sites of care. KARL STORZ is a family-owned company based in Tuttlingen, Germany, that designs, engineers, manufactures, and markets all its products with an emphasis on visionary design, precision craftsmanship, and clinical effectiveness.

Artisight redefines the possibilities of healthcare through its Smart Hospital Platform and solutions for virtual care, quality improvement, and care coordination. Artisight’s state-of-the-art computer vision and robust multi-sensor network adapts in real-time to specific environments and workflows, unlocking previously inaccessible data and ensuring seamless integration into the healthcare ecosystem.