The future of surgery is here and is happening at the Mayo Clinic as it debuts new virtual operating rooms.
They have cutting edge technology that they hope will mean better treatment for patients.
"As we launch this, I feel like we're at the Kennedy Space Center with a mission to Mars about to be launched," comments Dr. Bernard Bendok.
This is a dream five years in the making for Dr. Bendok.
He says they wanted to "bring the best of radiology technology together with the best of surgical technology into a new type of space designed to facilitate minimally invasive and image-guided surgery."
The result is the operating room of the future. Some of these features can't be found in any other hospital across the globe.
"We're one of the first centers in the world to bring in robotic c-arm fluoroscopy unit," Dr. Bendok states.
It can do stroke therapy and provide scans and mapping for them to navigate during surgery through the smallest incisions.
They've also designed an MRI unit connected to the operating room.
This essentially cuts out the waiting game to see how the surgery went.
Dr. Bendok explains, "So we either can confirm that we did a great job and we can close. Or we can then continue the operation to make sure we remove any residual tumor."
It's also shaking things up for personnel, creating new teams that hadn't really been brought together before.
"Radiology technologists and nurses working with traditional operating room nurses and technologists have really become one integrated team," Dr. Bendok remarks.
In the end, he says it's really about better patient outcome and challenging how things have been done so they can inspire what can be done in the future.
"We want to always be thinking about how can we make therapy better, how can we make it more precise. How can we make it safer and that requires innovation," Dr. Bendok concludes.