[ Original Article posted at Canadian Healthcare Technology ]
By Jerry Zeidenberg
TORONTO – A giant operating room – four times the size of most ORs and containing a dazzling panoply of imaging hardware and software – is opening this month at the University Health Network. Called the GTx-OR (short for guided therapeutics operating room), the multi-million dollar facility houses a Siemens dual-energy CT Flash scanner and an Artis Zeego robotic fluoroscopy machine – the first site in the world to have them in a single operating room.
The top-of-the-line equipment will enable physicians to quickly and accurately image patients while they’re on the operating table, helping surgeons to provide the best possible outcomes through the use of image-guided procedures.
A team led by Dr. Jonathan Irish, chief of surgical oncology at University Health Network, has been planning the GTx-OR for several years. The project was spawned by the Techna Institute, a research and development centre at UHN that’s designed to produce and refine technologies to improve patient care.
Dr. Irish is also clinical lead for the guided therapeutics core of the Techna Institute. The surgical innovations devised at Techna are to be tested and further developed in the GTx-OR after extensive pre-clinical experimentation.
[ Read the full article at Canadian Healthcare Technology ]