Improving My Surgical Workflow

In a previous post, I outlined how including ZEISS VERACITY Surgery Planner into my practice empowers me to assess in the OR which formulas and approaches are best for my patients, keeping surgical plans at my fingertips. As I alluded to in that piece, ZEISS VERACITY Surgery Planner also improves my clinical workflow: digitization of data transfer and inter-platform communication have enhanced my presurgical efficiency, and hiccups caused by same-day adjustments to surgical plans have been smoothed over. Let’s explore those efficiency improvements.

My clinic before and after integration of ZEISS VERACITY Surgery Planner is a study in contrasts that illustrates how this new technology has improved my clinic. In the pre-VERACITY era, my clinical team and I gathered preoperative biometry data on a handful of platforms (such as the ZEISS IOLMaster 700) and created surgical plans using our preferred formulas (eg, Barrett, Barrett True K) based on a series of possible IOLs and refractive targets that were good fits for the patient. Transferring data from the presurgical suite to the OR was a hybrid analog-digital process: the surgical plans were printed and the biometry data were loaded onto a USB drive, which was then transferred to a single ZEISS CALLISTO eye panel located in the surgical suite where that patient was scheduled for surgery.

Although my team and I felt that we had optimized this process as best as possible, there were several limitations to this workflow—many of which were not apparent to me and my team until ZEISS VERACITY Surgery Planner entered our protocol. In hindsight, re-running of calculations consumed technicians’ bandwidth, printing out multipage surgical plans proved cumbersome, and moving data via a USB drive to a single ZEISS CALLISTO eye panel proved to be chaotic to keep track of patient information to ensure the right USB went to the correct OR.

ZEISS VERACITY Surgery Planner has improved our workflow to the point that these inefficiencies no longer exist. On top of that, disruptions caused by transcription errors, same-day changes to patient preferences, and day-of biometry capture—all of which jeopardize an optimized patient experience—have been neutralized by ZEISS VERACITY Surgery Planner.

ZEISS VERACITY Surgery Planner serves as the centralized hub that allows our presurgical and surgical platforms to communicate. Now, biometry data captured on any platform (even non-ZEISS) is sent directly to ZEISS VERACITY Surgery Planner, which both retains the dataset and transfers a copy of it to the CALLISTO eye panels in every surgical suite. This means that not only is my team no longer tasked with manual transfer of patient data, but I am able to access preoperative measurements for every patient irrespective of which surgical suite they present to.

Those who are still weighing whether ZEISS VERACITY Surgery Planner fits their surgical practice might ask themselves a simple question: will this solution improve your practice in a noticeable manner by providing an increased focus on patients; boosting confidence in lens, target, and formula selection; and optimizing presurgical procedures?
For many, the answer is yes.

^{The statements of the author reflect only their personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of any institution with whom they are affiliated.
The author has a contractual or other financial relationship with Carl Zeiss Meditec, Inc. and has received financial support.}