The healthcare industry has to change. With a lack of staffing, increased costs, and a growing demand for high-quality care, it’s become clear that hospitals up and down the US are struggling to cope. Change, however, is not going to be a sudden, all-rounded thing. Realistically, it will take multiple innovations across specific healthcare sectors to ultimately improve the efficiency and success of the industry.
Thankfully, these kinds of small but crucial changes are already happening. In 2021, for instance, the Galaxy retractor by June Medical won The Queen’s Award for Innovation. This is a self-retaining surgical retractor that not only improves access to a surgical site, but frees up the hands of an assistant and results in fewer staff in the operating room. This subsequently has a positive effect on the staffing problem and reduces the risk of infection by replacing the number of individuals close to the open wound.
An Indicator of the Future
This is just one innovation that has made an impact on the surgical landscape, but it’s the innovation that gives us the most clear indication of what surgical instrumentation will look like in the future – and how the healthcare industry will be impacted as a whole.
In order to help with the low staffing and increased costs, more innovators are leaning towards ‘hands-free’ surgical instruments, essentially eliminating the amount of surgeons needed in the operating room. These hands-free tools are designed not only to maintain high standards of precision, but to enhance safety by reducing the potential for human error.
You can’t say that self-retaining retractors ‘automate’ the surgical process, but they do perform a job that – in the past – assistants would have to perform. As technology advances, we will likely see more instances where human processes are replaced by technological innovations. The integration of robotics and AI, for instance, has already begun. These technologies are able to assist surgeons in a variety of tasks, further reducing human error and alleviating the burden on understaffed surgical teams.
The rise of 3D printing technology is similarly allowing for the creation of personalised surgical instruments, tailored to the specific anatomy of each patient. This customisation can lead to more effective, faster procedures, which gives surgeons more time to operate on patients, and essentially improve the flow of patients in overcrowded, understaffed hospitals across the country.
The Future of Surgical Instrumentation
With sustainable tools, telemedicine, and training simulations also developing in the healthcare industry, it’s clear that the future of surgical instrumentation is bright – and as mentioned earlier, this will ultimately improve the healthcare landscape as a whole. Human surgeons will always be required, of course.
It’s unlikely that an entirely automated surgical process is on the horizon. But through the innovations we’re seeing now, the role of the surgeon will ultimately evolve, with enhanced operating times and an increased focus on the most critical and complex elements of surgery. This will only have positive implications, so while the healthcare system is struggling now, it’s not hard to see how it will develop and improve over the coming decades.
