Great Ormond Street Hospital. Apple Technology Helps Improve Surgical Treatment for Children
Cardiothoracic Surgeons and Final Cut Studio
The surgeons on Elliott’s team capture video of every operation with the goal of sharing their experience. They edit the videos themselves — and like it.
“We do all our own editing,” says Elliott. “The surgeons enjoy it — very often they’ll do it on their days off. We start them off using iMovie, then introduce them to Final Cut Pro. Most of them pick it up in one day, with one demonstration. They all love it, so they work their way through the learning curve quickly.”
Final Cut Pro is important to the team, whose goal is to produce quality videos suitable for teaching, sharing with colleagues, and informing patients’ families. Their primary raw video source is the head-mounted single-chip camera. Although its optics are excellent, its video output is less than ideal after passing through a series of interfaces. Final Cut Pro lets the surgeons turn this material into professional-looking videos.
“Final Cut Studio lets us make sophisticated and professional presentations of our surgeries and helps build good archive material,” says Elliott. “We can color correct the video, reposition images, and use iris and window effects to focus attention where we want it. We can layer video as well, and the labeling is excellent. Using Final Cut Pro, we can put together an excellent movie for viewing by people around the world.”
The Ultimate Goal: A Web-Based Global Archive
“There are about 3500 things that can go wrong with a heart congenitally,” says Elliott. “And there are about 2500 things you can do to fix it.”
Elliott and his colleagues want to help heart surgeons get information about these defects quickly when they need it. He is taking the lead in setting up an online database at ctsnet.org, a website for cardiothoracic surgeons. Each condition will be numbered, and behind the number will be a wealth of information — including a sophisticated video clip of the corrective surgical operation. The quality of this clip is important.
“If you’re going worldwide with this material, you need to set a good standard in terms of the images you use,” says Elliott. “Apple technology enables us to create that standard and share our techniques so other hospitals can help build the resource.”
Hospitals in several countries have already committed to contributing material to the archive. Elliott and the Cardiothoracic Unit at GOSH are using an Apple Xserve to develop its infrastructure.
“We’re using the Xserve to rehearse what we want to do,” he says. “You can’t put this kind of thing in the public domain until it’s properly populated with data. Our archiving at the moment is relatively primitive compared to the outside world, but it’s a start.” Elliott also plans to make video clips of operations part of an electronic patient record that families and referring physicians can access.
Whatever happens, Apple technology will have a crucial part to play in this work. “I’m always looking for more sophisticated cameras and archiving tools,” says Elliott, “but no one has done better than Apple as far as screen quality and editing resources are concerned. We’ll definitely be sticking with Macs for that kind of work.”
For thousands of newborn children in countries far from GOSH, this work will make a world of difference.
