Visual Patient Avatar

2023: Product Announcement

On October 13, 2023, Philips announced the Visual Patient Avatar platform for visualizing patient data. The system is said to allow faster and more efficient decision-making in the operating room, which will ultimately help save lives.

Philips notes that in modern operating systems, information overload and tight timeframes lead to poor situational awareness. And this is the cause of 81.5% of anesthesia-related errors. Traditional medical systems display vital signs and numerous numbers that take considerable time to interpret. As a result, the speed of making important clinical decisions deteriorates. The Visual Patient Avatar platform provides an opportunity to solve the problem.

Visual Patient Avatar

The new system forms a simple digital avatar of the patient by visualizing information through animation, colors and forms. By looking at the monitor, anesthesiologists and/or nurses can perceive and analyze important data faster and more confidently. Thanks to this approach, doctors can concentrate on the main task and minimize the number of possible errors.

Philips developed the Visual Patient Avatar platform in collaboration with two specialists from the imaging technology research group of the Institute of Anesthesiology at the University Hospital Zurich. The idea is inspired by aircraft dashboards, which display understandable and easily readable data reflecting flight conditions. Experiments showed that the patient's visual avatar increased the number of vital signs perceived by the doctor by 57% when viewed for 10 seconds. During the first use of Visual Patient Avatar, doctors correctly identify 73% of all information.^[1]

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