The modern operating room (OR) is a place of extraordinary possibility. It's an almost mythical arena, where the skills of many converge in one tightly orchestrated environment. An environment sometimes constrained, or indeed lifted, by life threatening pressures. Yet for all the clinical brilliance that takes place here, much of what happens in every OR is still heavily reliant on fragmented systems, siloed information and data, and a surprising amount of guesswork.
“With Proximie, guesswork and subjectivity is being replaced with insight and objectivity.”
By unifying ambient procedural data, computer vision technology, scheduling information from Electronic Health Records (EHRs), and real-time data from medical devices, Proximie is building a more connected, intelligent OR. An objective space for every clinician across the ecosystem of surgery and a place where a single source of truth reigns for every person and device within any given OR. Ensuring critical data is accessible, accurate, and actionable, and every decision - before, during and after surgery - can be informed and optimised in real-time, to help every team member work in perfect harmony with their colleagues and their surroundings.
But this isn’t just a technical aspiration, it’s also a philosophical one. It’s a deeply human one.
A data desert
Despite the remarkable advances in surgical techniques and technology, the OR remains one of the least digitised environments in healthcare. This despite the OR being one of the most expensive resources in any hospital.
As Proximie’s CEO and Founder, Dr. Nadine Hachach-Haram, explains: “We’re almost shooting in the dark and you can’t improve what you can’t measure.”
Until recently, ORs have been largely unmeasured, unmonitored, and unoptimised. Crucial data - like what happened during a procedure, how long each surgical step took, which team members were involved in and out of the OR, which devices were used, or how surgical schedules were adhered to - either lives in siloed and separate systems, or doesn’t exist at all. This disconnect makes it difficult to learn from each procedure, identify inefficiencies, or replicate best practices across teams and hospitals.
Proximie is changing that by creating a layer of connected intelligence that captures, unifies, and analyses surgical data in real-time. A layer of intelligence shown to be able to drive transformative change.
In Proximie's latest white paper - which was informed by nearly 100 OR experts across the US and UK - the huge cost of inefficiencies in the OR was revealed, but importantly, the findings also highlighted where instant improvements could be made to make significant efficiency gains. For example, Proximie’s partnership with a major US health system, revealed the opportunity to optimise 24% of total OR time, unlocking the potential to perform 9,000 additional surgeries annually and by doing so generating $90 million in additional revenue. The changes that would need to be made could be done without the need for additional resources.
A unified layer of insight
At the heart of Proximie’s solution that can drive these system level changes is the integration of multiple data sources into one continuous, interpretable real-time stream that combines:
By bringing all these inputs together, Proximie creates a holistic view of the surgical workflow; before, during, and after each procedure. The result is a broad but digestible tapestry of information that paints an objective view of an ORs true performance. A place where bottlenecks become visible. Doors that should be shut, remain open. Scheduling conflicts emerge in plain sight. Long walking lines for scrub teams become glaringly obvious. Time no longer ebbs away unnecessarily. Late starts, long turn-around time, over-runs and cancellations turn from moments of frustration to opportunities for improvement. Inefficiencies are no longer invisible. Opportunities for improvement practically light up on the Proximie dashboard. Making the unseen, seen.
“Inefficiencies are no longer invisible.”
Proximie offers the ability to streamline coordination across teams. In traditional settings and through no fault of their own, teams can often find themselves operating in silos: surgeons rarely see how scheduling delays upstream affect their OR in real-time; device reps don’t always have visibility into how their devices are actually used in the OR; and administrators lack clear data on throughput, team performances or where to focus their quality improvement efforts for the best results.
With Proximie, everyone can operate from a single source of truth. This has huge implications which has already been clinically proven. A hospital could use Proximie to identify that late start times are frequently caused by missing instruments, prompting a review of sterilisation workflows. A surgical team could analyse video and time-stamped data to understand why a particular step is consistently delayed. A device company could see how their equipment is used across multiple hospitals and use that data to improve training or iterate designs. It’s not just about marginal gains, it’s about systemic transformation.
With Proximie, each procedure becomes a data-rich event that can be studied, stamped, replayed, and learned from. Trends can be identified across hundreds of thousands of procedures. Best practices can be shared across continents and surgical training can be enriched with real-world cases, context, and analytics. This is how Proximie moves surgery from a skill practiced by many in isolation to a team pursuit guided by data, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
People, not just process
More efficient ORs means time back to overstretched and overworked healthcare teams. It’s about improving patient outcomes by reducing variability. It’s about supporting healthcare systems under strain by making surgical care more efficient, more scalable, and more equitable. A smooth running OR is not just a logistical and financial win, it’s a human one too. Fewer delays mean less anxiety for patients. Better data means safer surgeries and improved workflows mean clinicians can focus less on admin and more on care. More predictable processes, means more predictable and scalable healthcare.
Dr Nadine says: “For too long, the analogue environment of the operating theatre prohibited healthcare teams from truly understanding, in a simple and objective way, what had happened during any given procedure. This veil into the once mythical operating theatre is being lifted thanks to technology that helps teams to better understand every facet of their work, including their healthcare system's strengths and weaknesses. Leveraging AI and automation is enabling predictive analytics to identify procedural bottlenecks, allocate and reallocate healthcare resources effectively and quickly, and improve decision making in real-time. These technologies are helping healthcare organisations to work smarter.”
With Proximie, the OR is no longer a black box but a transparent, learnable and predictable system. A place where every team, every procedure, and every outcome is enhanced by insight.
