early design phases of a new facility or a modernizing project, you
need to project and predict what technology will be out there when
the project is almost complete, which could be a couple of years from
now. You obviously want to buy the equipment at the very end of the
project so you'll have the latest devices. Being routed for 8K is impor-
tant so that anything that comes into the room will be able to function
at its native resolution. You'd never want to tell a physician that you're
downscaling the image from the best resolution it could be. When 8K
finally arrives, you want to just have to buy some new displays and
make an easy upgrade by a plug and play with blade cards.
Q
With 8K on the horizon, does that mean that 4K technology
will soon be obsolete?
A
Not at all. Even though 4K has been on the market for several
years and is kind of the standard, some of the imaging machines,
microscopes and other devices haven't caught up and are still not 4K.
Because some of these systems and devices have been kind of slow to
roll out into the surgical marketplace, 4K will be both the current- and
next-generation technology for a few years. The imaging systems and
microscopes will be 4K soon. Beware of systems that claim to have a
4K routing system but really are only a 4K monitor that has 4 1K
images going to it. That kind of setup basically gives you the image
quality of the HDTV in your home.
Q
What else is happening as ORs have
higher resolutions available to them?
A
A lot of technology trends at the moment are geared toward tying
everything together, which is really more important than choos-
ing between 8K or 4K. As your OR gets more equipment and you hit
4K, now what? That's where it gets interesting. You have the ability to
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