Director of Forgut Surgery

Dr. Prakash Gatta

Modern medicine requires the best technological practices to reduce complications and make healthcare efficient and affordable. This involves ensuring proper communication between the doctor and the patient and the up-gradation of data management tools in the medical industry. Overlake Medical Center & Clinics work towards the modernization of current practices to ensure better patient care.

In an exclusive interview with the magazine MedTech outlook, Dr. Prakash Gatta the Director of Forgut Surgery in the Overlake Medical Center & Clinics shares his thoughts and insights regarding the latest developments in the medical industry.

Could you give us an overview of what’s happening in the healthcare sector from your perspective?

As a surgeon I strive to connect better to my patients to ensure better patient outcomes. In post operation scenarios when the patient leaves the OR, leaves the hospital, and doesn’t see me for two weeks is the issue.. The two-week gap is when a patient may travel two hours to come to see me and go home and may not have direct communication with me the surgeon and may be working through intermediaries. The information that I need directly relayed to me to help the patient would mean something different to other medical staff.. I can’t wait for a week so the first callout is a post-surgical patient having a direct way of communicating with surgeons. This is a problem I need a solution to. And to do it in a compliant way, this would include contracting with a hospital or an offshoot of the pre-eminent EHR. .The most valuable thing in 2022 is data development in digitization of surgical procedures... So that means as Im performing an operation. There is a video of that operation and they are either using a robotic platform or a digital observatory platform or a laparoscopic platform with a screen and tv and video recording or doing that procedure open in an old-fashioned way but there is a camera in the OR and the light lower in the corner of the room. That’s data. which can be used to improve patient care. for example a video recording of the OR can help, not even of the operation of the circulating nurse but of the anesthesiologist switching to another anesthesiologist or an instrument that dropped on the floor. The third callout is when I’m doing an operation, for example, it’s being collected on the video allows me as a surgeon to learn from other people okay. So let’s say I’m doing a course, reports from the operation and the artificial intelligence and machine learning that is integrated into your operating platform pops up with a little window, picture and picture in the corner said, hey look x, y and z surgeon in that part of the country or that part of the world, does this portion of the procedure differently and here is a video of it while you are doing that operation right? You are sharing information so that I can I do an operation better and if it meets the high bar quality as sort of the index operation used that to teach other surgeons while they are doing the surgery The fourth point for me is my mentorship model, so if you have trainees such as resident scholars, and medical students. Allow them to start sitting in your shoes and perform the operation in a virtual setting. the night before. So that to be fully immersed in the ins and outs and the anatomy of that particular procedure, allow them to sort of understanding what your next steps are, allow them to watch the video or procare as opposed to reading a textbook so they can ask knowing questions and simulate themselves in the operation and anticipate your moves because anticipation in an operating room is the best assistant because it makes you more efficient.

“Prevention isn’t better than cure, it is the cure”

In terms of this trend were there particular directions you see, in evolutions down the line with regard to any particular disruption of transformation?

The example that im bringing up are robotics companies, there is only one prominent FDA-approved robotic instrumentation to a company called intuitive. The product is called Da Vinci and is an excellent hardware product. It’s a digital base where the surgeon is controlling the instrumentation using a console that could be in any part of the planet and it allows us to perform the operation while the same technique is laparoscopic except with a different tool. But that data collection is now being utilized or they have at least realized value because they talked to professionals like me and they said here opportunity. So some of these products are being developed. We don’t know how far away it is because these are for-profit companies and they have to realize value. It’s different if you are a smaller company working on a small component of data collection and crunching that data and returning it back to the consumer which is the patient is technically the surgeon. But we are a big large corporation. Money is sponge able so every sub-department has to essentially flow with the general direction of the ship and in order to effectively develop some solutions, the goal is to sort of light the spark of innovation amongst the people who live in this world in sectors of IT, med tech, or some medicine, healthcare, NIT where those paths can be crossed easily and the connections can be made to generate innovation or innovative products.

What would be your advice to your peers in the field of medicine?

So my only advice to my peers is to the folks who don’t embrace technology, it’s time to retire with a lot of them out there. The reason is your patients, your customers are coming to expect you to be on the cutting edge cause that equals quality. Embracing technology will actually prolong their careers, and allow them to learn, a lot of which doesn’t happen, so there is a lot of learning that doesn’t happen. Because they are intimidated by change. So I think the only way you stay relevant and here on the cutting edge in any medical career, whatever sub-specialty, nursing, physical therapy is to be open to ideas. Because ideas will overtake you if you don’t embrace them.