title: The multifunctional therapy room of the future: image guidance, interdisciplinarity, integration and impact on patient pathways.
abstract: With few exceptions the interventional rooms of the present are either imaging suites or sterile operating rooms. Their users are restricted to either percutaneous procedures or to two-staged image-guided surgery without intra-operative imaging control. Since interventional therapy of the future will be minimally invasive and since minimally invasive therapy is essentially image-guided therapy, a new physical place for these activities has to be devised: the multifunctional therapy room of the future integrates sophisticated imaging and image guidance modalities together with advanced surgical and life-support equipment in a sterile environment [1, 2, 3]. Even given a high degree of integration, this will be a complex and costly piece of medical technology. These two factors--complexity and cost-- require interdisciplinary technological and medical collaboration to bring it into existence, distribute its cost and maximize usage and medical benefit. Yet another dimension of multifunctionality will be introduced and a significant impact on the care of vitally threatened patients will be exerted by using this room not only for elective image-guided therapy but also for emergent one-stop diagnosis and treatment. Motivation, technology, implementation strategies and funding of this image-guided, integrated and interdisciplinary therapy room, as well as a comprehensive approach combining emergency care and elective computer-assisted therapy (CAT), are discussed in this paper.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Radiology, University Hospital of Basel, Switzerland.
authors.forename: A L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Jacob
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Regazzoni
authors.forename: W
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Steinbrich
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Messmer
mesh_terms: D019091:Critical Pathways; D003952:Diagnostic Imaging; D006749:Hospital Design and Construction / Q000639:trends*; D006757:Hospital Units / Q000639:trends; D006801:Humans; D009873:Operating Rooms; D011872:Radiology Department, Hospital; D015642:Radiology, Interventional / Q000639:trends