Arthrex merges AI, VR, film to train surgeons globally

In a nod to the future of surgery, Arthrex has opened a Hollywood-style production studio and observation suite in Naples that bring together cinematic storytelling, virtual reality and artificial intelligence to train surgeons from around the world.

The Naples-based company has made innovation its brand, designing and manufacturing about 1,000 new products each year as it continues to pioneer minimally invasive arthroscopy and sports medicine.

“It starts really with innovation — innovation in everything we do,” said David Bumpous, Arthrex’s vice president of operations, at an Urban Land Institute summit in Bonita Springs in June.

He was describing more than just the company’s signature devices and procedures. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Bumpous said, Arthrex designed a major expansion of its medical education facilities for health care professionals — a blend of art, science and product promotion.

Rising from the green lawn of its university-style headquarters campus in Naples, Studio X opened in May 2023. The 24,000-square-foot production studio creates exclusive multimedia content for medical professionals on how to use the company’s growing array of products.

“Studio X blends scientific research with cinematic creativity,” wrote Dr. Christopher Adams, an orthopedic surgeon and Arthrex’s senior vice president of global medical education. “It merges the technical precision of surgical education and procedural documentation with high-end storytelling techniques via virtual environments, motion tracking and immersive LED displays.”

The facility features a 17-foot-tall, 100-foot-wide LED screen for cinematic backdrops and presentations. Its Holodeck Extended Reality Stage, with motion-tracking cameras surrounded by LED walls and floors, can create fully immersive virtual environments. A surgical studio suite helps demonstrate procedures. Beyond video production, Studio X also serves as a planning center for future ambulatory surgical centers, operating rooms and other medical facilities by allowing designers to walk through virtual spaces.

Just across the street, the new Arthrex Observation Suite opened this spring. It gives visiting surgeons a chance to see real procedures at the Hospital for Special Surgery at Naples Comprehensive Health’s Kapnick Ambulatory Surgical Center.

“Visiting surgeons will be able to watch some of the top orthopedic surgeons perform the latest innovative techniques and then shuttle across the street to the Arthrex campus for hands-on training on what they just learned,” Adams says.

The suite allows guests to view two adjacent operating rooms through glass walls. With cameras providing close-up views, visiting surgeons can observe operations in detail, ask questions and receive real-time answers directly from the operating surgeon — in any language. An AI service translates the conversations.

“It’s really a huge benefit, I think, from the standpoint of international visitors and exposure because of the ability to show innovative techniques that we’re doing at NCH,” says Dr. Patrick A. Smith, an orthopedic surgeon and president of the board of directors of HSS at NCH Kapnick Ambulatory Surgical Center.

Rounding out Arthrex’s medical education efforts, the company’s clinical specialists also developed OrthoPedia, a peer-reviewed online learning platform for surgeons, patients and academics. It complements the company’s hands-on ArthroLab training center in Naples and other locations. Arthrex said it continues to host about 20,000 visitors each year at its headquarters for events such as its Orthopedic Patient Education Seminars.

With its product pipeline tied to the fast-moving worlds of AI, virtual reality and biotech, Arthrex’s education plans are equally ambitious, Adams says: “We continue to embrace the pace of innovation and meet the needs of health care professionals as medicine and technology evolve.”