West Kendall Baptist Hospital in Miami was among the first hospitals to begin using GE Healthcare’s software.
“This model of the heart very intuitively and clearly depicts the coronary vessels,” said Dr. Ricardo Cury, Director of Cardiac Imaging at the hospital. “It is helpful, especially with all the landmarks ahead of time, to facilitate the discussion among the clinical team on procedure planning, the optimal approach and the materials.”
“They had to use tools that were not necessarily designed with medical imaging or medical practitioners in mind,” said Amy Deubig, Global Product Marketing Manager at GE Healthcare. “The feedback we heard was that the tools weren’t user-friendly, nor were they integrated into their routine workflow.”
“In the past, it would take several days to get the images back,” said Dr. Cury. “The advantage of the new software is it’s in the same workstation where the technologists already do work on 3D images. The steps are a lot quicker and easier.”
More than 100 hospitals have ordered the software, which can be used to 3D print models of any organ as well as bones and muscles. According to GE Healthcare, as more and more hospitals use the software, it will become easier for doctors to share files with each other and have 3D models available for planning and education. More and more patients will also benefit, as their doctors and surgeons plan their surgeries ahead of time and can thus make the procedures quicker, safer and more precise. GE Healthcare’s software is a huge step toward lowering the barrier to entry to this kind of technology, and enabling any healthcare professional to 3D print complex medical models in a streamlined, push-of-a-button way.
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[Source/Images: GE]