Philips launches Azurion, a new platform for image-guided interventions. This platform forms the basis of an integrated portfolio of solutions focused on image-guided interventions, comprising interventional, imaging technologies and planning and navigation software combined with diagnostic and therapeutic catheters and a range of services, among others. Azurion helps medical specialists provide quality care at predictable costs. Four of Philips' Dutch partner hospitals are already working with Azurion: Isala in Zwolle, VUmc in Amsterdam, Albert Schweitzer in Dordrecht and St Antonius in Nieuwegein.
"Philips Azurion is a total solution for image-guided interventions. The rapid growth of image-guided interventions is increasing the importance of cost control for hospitals and healthcare systems, while at the same time healthcare has to meet increasingly stringent standards. Azurion is designed to meet these challenges and features new options to optimise workflow in and around the operating room and dashboards to monitor results, including during an intervention," explains Marc Bakker, business manager Imaging Systems at Philips Benelux.
Minimally invasive interventions
"Minimally invasive interventions, such as the treatment of certain tumours, aneurysms, constricted blood vessels, cardiac arrhythmias and heart valve defects using catheters, continue to grow rapidly thanks to the benefits for patients and healthcare providers. Besides more limited trauma and faster recovery for the patient, such procedures also have the advantage of being suitable for patients for whom open surgery is out of the question."
"During these procedures, however, doctors cannot directly see and feel the organs they are working on. Effective imaging, measurement and navigation technologies such as Philips Azurion are therefore crucial to guide minimally invasive procedures. As a central element in the interventional lab, these technologies offer the ability to visualise organs and tissues, guide the introduction of catheters and support and visualise the placement of implants, thereby improving the success rate of treatment," Bakker said.
Less radiation
Azurion delivers sharp images while exposing both the patient and caregivers to less radiation. "The system uses Clarity IQ. This is a unique technique where Philips can optimise image quality through numerous parameters. As a result, less radiation is ultimately needed to achieve good image quality."
All equipment and communication tools of the Azurion platform are present in the same room. This eliminates the need for the medical team to leave the room, increasing patient safety. "If all the information is present or can be viewed in the intervention room, the doctor is better able to carry out the intervention (read: treatment). In the past, the doctor sometimes had to wait for information to be available. Or the doctor had to walk to the operating room to review images at a workstation. These could be reconstruction images that another person had fabricated or, for example, older images that had been made and stored in a PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication System) system. A doctor can work faster with Azurion because he can edit the images himself at the treatment table. Speed in an intervention gives more safety and ultimately also leads to shorter treatment times. This in turn has an effect on the number of treatments per day and thus on the waiting list. A waiting list is eminently not good for a patient. Patients want to be treated as quickly as possible."
Monitoring sterility
"If a doctor has to walk to the operating room to review images or tell someone how to perform a specific measurement or reconstruction, it will affect the sterility of the treatment. We want to limit this kind of "walking" as much as possible," Bakker explains. In short, having all information and resources readily at hand and being able to manipulate them himself or by his immediate close associates (or have them manipulated) allows for shorter interventions, reduces risky issues that affect sterility, and results in better work.
Philips Azurion will be available in the Netherlands from April 2017.
By: Wouter Hoeffnagel
Source: Philips
Source: Azurion
