Controlling an intelligent operating room with spoken language

Abstract

With the emergence of new technologies, the surgical working environment becomes increasingly complex and comprises many medical devices which have to be taken care of. However, the operating personnel cannot be extended infinitely, which is why new strategies are needed for keeping the working environment manageable. Existing research projects in the field of intelligent medical environments mostly concentrate on workflow modelling or single smart features rather than building up a complete Intelligent Environment. In this work, we present an intelligent spoken language operation assistant, providing the surgeon assistance in many different situations before and during an ongoing procedure. The speech interface enables the surgeon to concentrate on the surgery and control the technical environment at the same time, without taking care of how to interact with the system. Furthermore, the implemented system observes the context of the surgery and controls several devices autonomously at the appropriate time during the procedure.