Crafting the Image in Surgical Telemedicine

In the past few years, surgical telemedicine has emerged as a promising answer to the increasing needs of everyday surgical collaboration and education. The implicit desire is to allow a remote surgeon to see the body as the local surgeon does in order to engage in shared decision-making or instruction. With this paper we take a step back by discussing the productive and cross-referential nature of surgical practice and image use. We discuss how it is not simply a case of transferring recorded video, but rather a new practice is instantiated in creating a view of the body for the remote surgeon. In order to investigate these practices for capturing and using video, we have deployed a head-mounted video camera (via the Google Glass) in six transplant organ recovery assessments. Drawing on observations and analysis of the video recordings, we examine how the transmitting surgeon crafts a view for the remote surgeon in order to facilitate the co-construction of knowledge and shared decision making. We use these findings to discuss further design directions for video use in expert telecommunication.