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George Murgatroyd, PhD, is VP & GM at Digital Technologies , a business unit in the Medical Surgical Portfolio at Medtronic. As we saw this summer, the Olympics and Paralympics were the greatest tests of human strength and skill. Every year, new records are set.
What makes continuous improvement possible? Mindset and athletic prowess. But also, technological innovations. Technology helps elite athletes improve their training and advance their techniques by analyzing performance in new ways.
The focus is on enabling marginal gains that, over time, result in breaking records. Take the U.S.
swimming superstar Katie Ledecky. Behind her record-breaking performance in Paris lies years of rigorous training—and sophisticated technology. As Ledecky said in the run-up to the games: “.
.. any athlete is always trying to improve .
.. always trying to learn as much as we can, and one way to do that is through technology.
” This year's Olympics, for example, was the first where elite U.S. swimmers had a " digital twin " as part of their training.
Trump Takes Questions From Garbage Truck As Campaigns Seize On Each Other’s ‘Garbage’ Remarks Trump Dismisses Advisors And Repeats ‘Protect’ Women Line—Says He’ll Do It ‘Whether The Women Like It Or Not’ Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Clues And Answers For Thursday, October 31st As the Digital Technologies business leader at Medtronic, most of my role focuses on technology for surgeons. However, I frequently look at different sectors to find examples of innovation and have taken a keen interest in how, behind the scenes, sports stars utilize technology including data, AI and software to enhance performance—much like surgeons. In surgery, marginal gains can potentially save lives.
Like with athletics, surgery is a field in which technology offers new ways to gain deeper insights into performance and continuous improvement. Here are just three ways I believe technology helps drive this progress: 1. Data And Intelligence Not long ago, decisions on how athletes could improve were often based on intuition and subjectivity.
Today, computing and data enable a much more evidence-based approach. Many Olympic and Paralympic squads use data analysis as a core component of their winning formula. The digital twins mentioned above, for instance, analyze everything from stroke patterns to turn times and body position.
By integrating this data with race footage, a digital twin of the swimmer can identify areas for improvement. This might mean a few hundredths of a second saved—the margin between a win and a loss. In surgery, data-informed insights are becoming much more commonplace.
Surgeons are increasingly reviewing videos of their operations to understand key moments during a surgery which may inform small but meaningful changes to their approach. They see the growing value of capabilities, such as AI, to transform surgical training and potentially enhance patient care . This was affirmed by a recent Medtronic survey of U.
S. surgeons, indicating that reducing errors in patient care could be a potential benefit of AI in the future of surgery. 2.
Training And Coaching As mentioned above, digital technologies offer ways of transforming training and coaching. Many Olympic teams employ data scientists alongside coaches. In gymnastics, for example, 3D cameras and AI have been used to provide very specific information back to gymnasts and their coaches on routines.
Similarly, the era of more precise training in surgery is upon us. With more objective data on their performance, surgeons can have informed discussions with their mentors or mentees about personal performance and progress. Surgeons can “play back” their operations, benefiting from objective insights.
3. Connectivity Athletes can spend every day with their coaches, on the track, in the pool or at the arena. The challenge with surgery, as several leading surgeons have pointed out, is that no experienced, elite surgeon has a personal coach standing with them in the operating room.
Technology can give surgeons access to the benefits of real-time learning and coaching. Surgeries can now be securely broadcast in real time from the operating room, creating an opportunity for other surgeons anywhere in the world to coach, observe, learn and share insights. Making The Leap The records broken at this year’s Olympics and Paralympics belong to the athletes who worked the hardest and the smartest.
Each victory is made of many marginal gains over years of training, and new methods to identify and analyze opportunities for improvement have made it possible. Here remains a meaningful opportunity in surgery as well. The insights technology can generate have the power to facilitate critical performance analysis.
In the long run, I am certain better training opportunities—and better performance awareness—can lead to better patient care. But transformations are never straightforward. Healthcare providers and their partners continue to face hurdles they will need to overcome.
Safeguarding patients’ data remains a priority. Digital solutions must conform to rules and regulations, such as HIPAA and HITECH, to protect information and maintain privacy. Technology can also be part of the solution here.
Take, for example, AI to detect and protect patient information in real time before it is transferred or stored. An example of this in practice today is technology that automatically blurs surgical video captured outside the body, to preserve patient and staff privacy. And as the demand for data grows, so too does the demand for financially viable and environmentally conscious storage solutions.
Recent reports from Amazon Web Services (AWS) show that cloud-based solutions offer an average of 44% cost savings over five years and an 88% carbon footprint reduction compared to on-premise servers. Cloud migration is accelerating globally , and hospitals are doing their due diligence to understand the opportunity for their systems. To summarize these reflections, digital technologies present significant benefits to surgical teams in the long run, but attention to data protection and storage is key from the outset.
Hospital leaders and decision-makers, along with the industry as a whole, continue to consider how to best bring the benefits of new technology to surgeons. Our athletic superstars have shown how a marginal adjustment can deliver a major gain. The time is now to advance the power of technology for our surgeons—for healthcare and, ultimately, for patients.
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