KARL STORZ equipment supports veterinary medicine: The Norwegian University of Life Sciences benefits from the latest OR1^™ integration and software solutions

Tuttlingen, 17.06.2021: Digitalization and high-end medical equipment in healthcare are not only required in human medicine, but also in the veterinary sector, for diagnostics and treatment, and especially for training and research purposes. Since many diseases affecting humans originate in animals, it is crucial to understand the associations between human and animal health. Therefore, the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU) invested in a brand-new research and teaching center allocated to the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine. The faculty located at Campus Ås is Norway’s only institution of higher education for veterinarians with competence in veterinary medicine and veterinary public health.

Since January 2021, pet owners, students and researchers have benefited from the state-of-the-art operating theaters, and the examination and autopsy rooms equipped by KARL STORZ. The solutions not only support the daily business in general, they also became even more important during the pandemic.

“KARL STORZ was chosen to deliver a brand-new AV system for diagnostics and operating theaters. […] The new AV systems could not have come to us at a better time […]. Without access to this technology, we would not have been able to remotely educate our veterinary students in the practical subject of surgery. In the surgery department, the new AV system has made an enormous change, and it cannot be compared to our previous situation”, states Francisca Corral, Assistant Professor at NMBU.

The animal hospital consists of 10 operating theaters, 8 examination and 3 autopsy rooms for both production and companion animals. Each operating theater and most of the other rooms are equipped with the SCENARA^® software solution, which enables easy and intuitive administration, and editing and storage of the content generated along the patient care pathway. All autopsy rooms and 9 operating theatres are installed with the extensive integration solution OR1 NEO^®, while another operating theatre benefits from the compact integration solution OR1 AIR^®. With these solutions, images captured during live-surgeries or autopsies can be recorded or directly streamed to lecture halls. Bi-directional communication and telestration additionally facilitate training and education. All examination rooms are equipped with AIDA^®, a dual-channel documentation solution for recording still images and video sequences in up to 4K UHD quality in 2D and 3D. 5 examination and 4 operating rooms include the IMAGE1 S^™ full HD camera system.

“We can now transfer diagnostic images from the operating theater, such as fluoroscopy or intraoperative images, directly to PACS and the patient’s journal. We can also live stream surgeries showing both the surgery field, arthroscope/endoscope, the OR room and radiology images directly to students sitting at home and to lecture halls in the hospital. There is audio going both ways since there are incorporated microphones and speakers in the OR rooms, making the communication also audio-interactive with students or colleagues […]. We can record, edit and save video or images of our surgeries for later use, education and for documentation, directly into the patient file. Within the operating theater we have big screens that are integrated to the AV system facilitating our surgeries by being able to look up diagnostic images, for example radiographs or CT scans during orthopedic surgeries”, adds Francisca Corral.

KARL STORZ looks forward to the close cooperation with the Norwegian University of Life Sciences in the future, and is proud to be able to support treatment and research in the field of veterinary medicine with its solutions, and thus also to help in identifying the connections between veterinary and human medicine.