Consensus for Operating Room Multimodal Data Management: Identifying Research Priorities for Data-Driven Surgery

This study aimed to identify research areas that demand attention in multimodal data-driven surgery for improving data management in minimally invasive surgery. New surgical procedures, high-tech equipment, and digital tools are increasingly being introduced, potentially benefiting patients and surgical teams. These innovations have resulted in operating rooms evolving into data-rich environments, which, in turn, requires a thorough understanding of the data pipeline for improved and more intelligent real-time data usage. As this new domain is vast, it is necessary to identify where efforts should be focused on developing seamless and practical data usage. A modified electronic Delphi approach was used; 53 investigators were divided into the following groups: a research group (n=9) for problem identification and a narrative literature review, a medical and technical expert group (n=14) for validation, and an invited panel (n=30) for two electronic survey rounds. Round 1 focused on a consensus regarding bottlenecks in surgical data science areas and research gaps, while round 2 prioritized the statements from round 1, and a roadmap was created based on the identified essential and very important research gaps. Consensus panelists have identified key research areas, including digitizing operating room (OR) activities, improving data streaming through advanced technologies, uniform protocols for handling multimodal data, and integrating AI for efficiency and safety. The roadmap prioritizes standardizing OR data formats, integrating OR data with patient information, ensuring regulatory compliance, standardizing surgical AI models, and securing data transfers in the next generation of wireless networks. This work is an international expert consensus regarding the current issues and key research targets in the promising field of data-driven surgery, highlighting the research needs of many operating room stakeholders with the aim of facilitating the implementation of novel patient care strategies in minimally invasive surgery.