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Hospitals are under extreme pressure to reduce or cut costs and become more profitable. Operating rooms (ORs) drive approximately 60% of revenue in the average hospital. The most critical hospital issues entail finding new methods to reduce human errors and improve efficiency and quality of surgical care. New technology is now available to help hospitals reduce operation risks while maximizing their return on OR efficiencies. Currently, the major challenges for the adoption of the digital Operating Room OR, apart from the obvious need for financial investments, include the need for interoperability, the risk of cybersecurity, and the lack of expert resources. A detailed, comprehensive solution set needs to be formulated for the hospital as a strategy; parts of the plan may be implemented in phases, keeping the systems open and inter-operable for future solutions to be easily integrated. Frost & Sullivan believes that the current generation of younger professionals will soon make up the majority of the global healthcare workforce and deliver the changes that are needed to ensure healthcare systems are as effective as possible.

Value-based care being the priority, Frost & Sullivan believes that technology will help transform delivery, improve patient care, provide work satisfaction and drive value-based care. It presents a platform to address the high costs and waste that destabilize budgets. This study presents a detailed analysis of the current state and future opportunities in the digital OR market.

With the global demand for controlling healthcare costs, there is an increasing demand for hospitals to showcase operational efficiency. The need for precision and technology innovation in turn drives adoption of automated and digital technologies within hospital operating rooms.

The OR comprises of medical equipment with large volumes of valuable patient data recorded from previous procedures and collected in real-time during procedures. It is also crucial to have the latest medical data of the patient having a procedure, for a surgeon as he prepares for surgery as well as during surgery. Despite most of the information being stored in the hospital’s databases, the challenge lies in the fact that it is not always integrated with any of the devices in the OR. Hence there is no consolidated data made available to the surgeon in the OR.