Caresyntax and UMass Medical School Program on Surgical Safety Selected for 2020 Massachusetts Digital Health Sandbox Network

Will identify predictive indicators of surgical risk, develop simulation programs to remotely train residents

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Jan 19, 2021, 09:01 ET

BOSTON, Jan. 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Caresyntax, a pioneer in surgical automation, analytics, and AI software and technologies, today announced that it was selected to join the Massachusetts Digital Health Sandbox Network as part of a joint project with the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS) to install a digital platform in operating rooms that can enable video-based assessments of a surgeon's technical performance.

The Massachusetts Digital Sandbox Network connects startups to cutting-edge research and development facilities and provides opportunities to test innovations in Network labs. Over the next year, Caresyntax will work with UMass Medical School's Department of Surgery to collect and analyze high volume video data on surgical performance in a simulation environment. Together, Caresyntax and the UMMS interprofessional Center for Experiential Learning and Simulation (iCELS) will use the data to identify predictive indicators of surgical risk and complications and utilize the simulation setting to improve safety.

"Medical schools and teaching hospitals worldwide have been forced to reassess how they support training and learning opportunities during the pandemic," said Dennis Kogan, Caresyntax CEO and co-founder. "With access to a renowned medical school and labs dedicated to immersive education, UMass Medical School and the Digital Health Initiative are ideal partners for strengthening these programs, expanding the reach of our patient safety-focused technology to more facilities, and accelerating innovation across the industry."

"We're always striving to improve surgical performance and we know that many of the answers are right in front of us, but in ways that can be challenging to apply," said Dr. Demetrius Litwin, chairman of the department of surgery at UMass Medical School. "With Caresyntax, we may have the tools to understand what works and what doesn't work so that we can operate more safely."

The partners will also leverage the insights made possible through video data to develop a fully remote and immersive virtual surgery simulation program to train residents, modernizing residency learning for the COVID-19 era and beyond. The project aims to develop a new approach to surgical training that can be leveraged by other medical schools and hospitals to improve learning opportunities worldwide.

"The interprofessional Center for Experiential Learning and Simulation is renowned for exemplary simulation development, programming, and research," said Nathaniel Hafer, PhD, assistant professor of molecular medicine and Sandbox coordinator for the Medical School. "We look forward to collaborating with Caresyntax to develop innovative training programs that advance clinical simulation development, programming, and research for this generation of medical professionals and the next one."

About Caresyntax

Caresyntax is working to make mission-critical health care settings such as surgery, interventional radiology, and obstetrics smarter and safer. The company's proprietary solutions leverage IoT, analytics and AI technologies to automate clinical and operational decision support for surgical teams and support all outcome contributors in the delivery and management of risk-bearing contracts. By integrating data from medical devices, electronic health records, and other sources inside the OR into a unified data platform, Caresyntax helps caregivers better identify and manage risk, increase workflow efficiency, reduce surgical variability and improve operational or clinical outcomes at the point of care. Today, Caresyntax technologies are used in more than 8,000 operating rooms worldwide and support surgical teams in over 13 million procedures per year. For more information at caresyntax.com.

About the Massachusetts eHealth Institute

MeHI, or the Massachusetts eHealth Institute at the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, is the Commonwealth's entity for healthcare innovation, technology, and competitiveness, and partners with industry, government, and healthcare organizations to support the Massachusetts Digital Health Initiative on behalf of Governor Charlie Baker. MeHI also helps all the Commonwealth's providers harness the benefits of electronic health records and the Mass HIway, the statewide health information exchange. For more information, please visit https://mehi.masstech.org and follow @MassEHealth. Learn more about the Massachusetts Digital Health Initiative at www.massdigitalhealth.org.

About the University of Massachusetts Medical School

The University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS), one of five campuses of the University system, is comprised of the School of Medicine, the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, the Graduate School of Nursing, a thriving research enterprise and an innovative public service initiative, Commonwealth Medicine. Its mission is to advance the health of the people of the Commonwealth through pioneering education, research, public service and health care delivery with its clinical partner, UMass Memorial Health Care. In doing so, it has built a reputation as a world-class research institution and as a leader in primary care education. The Medical School attracts more than $266 million annually in research funding, placing it among the top 50 medical schools in the nation. In 2006, UMMS's Craig C. Mello, PhD, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and the Blais University Chair in Molecular Medicine, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, along with colleague Andrew Z. Fire, PhD, of Stanford University, for their discoveries related to RNA interference (RNAi). The 2013 opening of the Albert Sherman Center ushered in a new era of biomedical research and education on campus. Designed to maximize collaboration across fields, the Sherman Center is home to scientists pursuing novel research in emerging scientific fields with the goal of translating new discoveries into innovative therapies for human diseases.

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SOURCE Caresyntax