Virtual Dissection Table: Dissection by Taps and Glides of Fingers

Norbert von der Groeben (http://med.stanford.edu/ism/2011/may/dissection-0509.html)

Remember your Anatomy dissection hall, the karma-bhoomi (action-arena) for every medical student in the first year of medical education. Remember that pungent smell of formalin mixed with foul smell of decomposing tissue that goes to the deepest parts of your brains, just to leave you intoxicated for rest of the day. I am sure, that is an unforgettable experience for every medical student. After dissection class of 2 hours, there is not much of human anatomy you can identify or appreciate that too with 20 of your classmates flocking around a single cadaver. We have a new solution which can change the anatomy of the anatomy dissection hall.

I bet many of you will not have heard of the Virtual Dissection Table, a new innovative technology which takes studying anatomy to a whole new level. The Virtual Dissection Table, developed by Anatomage in collaboration with Stanford University's Division of Clinical Anatomy, is a breakthrough in visualizing human anatomy. It is another example of how an ordinary technology can be used for an extraordinary purpose. This virtual dissection table is effectively a computer with powerful graphics using a 3D anatomy software coupled with a life size display. It has potential to revolutionize the study of anatomy and the practice of image guided surgery. Check out these videos.

Video 1

Video 2

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-radio-and-tv-16421866

Features of Virtual Dissection Table

Touch screen interface: You can rotate, drag, and slice through the subject with a finger tip and change between Hard tissue, Soft Tissue and X-Ray radiology images.

Rendered 3D images: The skeletal structures, muscles, radiographic cross-sections, and textured soft tissue representations are all merged together into one data set that can be manipulated with virtual dissection tools.

Virtual Dissection Table: What can it be used for?

Teaching Anatomy: Complementary aid for cadaver based dissection courses. With its flexible annotation tools, institutions can create innovative programs, quizzes, and methods of study

Source: Anatomage

Clinical Practice: The table also can use real data from MRI and CT scans of patients. It can be used for diagnosis and treatment planning, and for patient education and consultation

How much a Virtual Dissection Table costs?

$60,000

Further Reading...

http://stanmed.stanford.edu/2011summer/article8.html

http://www.anatomage.com/product-TheTable.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-radio-and-tv-16421866

Healthcare IT: Is it helping us?

Yeah it is helping us, that’s what most of the doctors perceive as per a recent survey conducted by Accenture across eight countries with a sample size of 3700 doctors. The sample included baskets having 500 doctors per country in Australia, Canada, England, France, Germany, Spain and the United States and 200 doctors in Singapore between August and September 2011.





Figure 1: Source- Accenture Newsroom
http://newsroom.accenture.com/news/doctors-agree-on-top-healthcare-it-benefits-but-generational-divide-exists-according-to-accenture-eight-country-survey.htm


Key areas where Healthcare IT was strongly rated to have a positive impact were:

• Better access to quality data for Clinical research (70.9 percent of the sample reported positive benefits)
• Improved coordination of care (69.1 percent)
• Reduction in medical errors (66 percent).

What is one common thing amongst these three areas? The key variable behind these three areas is efficient data management and interchange which has been brought about by the healthcare IT revolution. Healthcare delivery being a complex cognitive environment, there is always a need for complex decision making which is mostly critical in nature. The attribute of providing right information at right time has resulted in these positive perceptions towards role of IT in enabling clinical research, improving coordination of care and reducing medical errors.


There are some areas about which the study population seems to be skeptic about (where they have responded with “negative impact”, “no impact” or “didn’t know”)

• reducing unneeded procedures (43.6 percent)
• improving access to services (43 percent)
• improving patient outcomes (39.2 percent)

If you notice, all these three areas are potential outcomes which have multiple-causality. There are many direct and indirect causations which can impact these areas. Most of the clinicians have a viewpoint which sees more direct cause-effect and looks for direct impact of clinical actions on the outcomes rather than indirect causations, owing to their experiences. From the viewpoint of a clinician, “unneeded procedure” is more a function of clinical choice, similarly “patient outcome” for doctors is more a function of success of clinical regimens and surgical procedures. IT may play a role of enabling tool in these but to ascribe the direct causality of “reducing unneeded procedures” and “improving patient outcomes” is rather too much to expect and ask for.

Another interesting finding of this survey is that U.S. physicians have rated the benefits of EMR and HIE lower than their international colleagues. This comes from a country which is investing the most when it comes to healthcare IT. Why is that? Is it because excess of reforms and IT fume already doing rounds in the air have made them obnoxious? Or is it that IT has reached a point of diminishing return and they are increasingly seeing less value in it?