Visionary Performs Surgical Video Distribution at Piedmont Healthcare

Avyve, acquired by AVI Systems, has integrated the PacketAV Matrix video distribution solution from Visionary in the new installation of Piedmont Healthcare, to assist during surgery and use it for teaching purposes.

Located in Atlanta (Georgia – Us.), Piedmont Healthcare is a recognized and award-winning non-profit community health system, composed of eleven hospitals with more than 2.500 medical professionals and 22.000 employees.

in 2020, Piedmont Healthcare Embarked on Expansion, to ten years, of the Atlanta hospital that began with the construction of a new tower - called Marcus– of sixteen floors to increase its capacity in 408 beds and 13 new operating theatres.

Avyve, recently acquired by AVI Systems, was selected as a technology integrator in these new facilities, in command of Blake Longsworth, as a project engineer, and Danny Rivera, account manager.

The goal for the Marcus Tower Piedmont Atlanta was to link each surgical space to a control room that could distribute video streams to multiple locations..

“The integration was carried out mainly in the Marcus heart and vascular center -points out Matt Adams, AREA OPERATIONS MANAGER of AVI Systems-. There are currently six operating rooms that are wired for transmission. Piedmont Healthcare wanted to use a video feed in operating rooms to help during surgery and distribute it to a larger room for teaching purposes”.

specifically, the surgical video streaming is distributed to a larger audience and an online audience, thanks to which doctors can educate other professionals about surgeries that are performed in real time.

Michael Shivers, multimedia director at Piedmont Heart, that's how he explains it.: “we have an auditorium within the Marcus heart and vascular center with capacity for 250 people, and the need to broadcast on the web to the virtual audience. In addition to using video streaming as a teaching tool, we needed a solution that would allow us to direct video signals to different operating rooms and that the surgeon could see his interlocutor. It was essential to have a solution with zero latency and that transmitted a reliable video signal over significantly long distances”.

One of the challenges was the technological integration between the different plants. “The operating rooms are located on a different floor than the auditorium, recalls Matt Adams., so we had to overcome a long-distance distribution for video feeds. We select the series PacketAV Matrix of Visionary for its ability to distribute reliable feed across multiple plants”.

For this project, several solutions of visionary's PacketAV Matrix series have been integrated, Including 18 wall plate encoders, 49 encoders and 22 Decoders, “to create a solution that was incredibly flexible and provided a simplified user experience”, Adds.

Considering that Marcus heart and vascular center is the first phase of the Piedmont Atlanta Hospital facility, “it was essential to select a solution that was easily expandable," says Adams., as well as flexible from a user experience point of view”.

Each of the locations of the wall plates “is designed as a plug and play solution’ -specifies-. The encoders were integrated into the wall because the operating room surfaces had to remain clear and clean.. Surgeons, Nurses, Etc. can take your cart with a computer or surgical equipment and connect it to the wall plate encoder”.

As explained from Visionary, PacketAV Matrix 4K UHD over IP series encoders and decoders redefine switching matrix traditional to create a flexible solution, scalable and cinematic quality.

PacketAV endpoints offer ultra-low latency, with unlimited distribution capabilities. Using existing network resources, encoders and decoders can be deployed quickly to enable cost-effective multi-channel audio and video distribution Dante/AES67 over IP.

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