Embrace this Solution in a Step-by-Step Approach

As my colleagues have outlined elsewhere in this series, ZEISS VERACITY Surgery Planner touches so many corners of a modern ophthalmic surgical practice. Some might feel intimidated by its scope, but fear not: taking a metered, stepwise approach to adopting this technology will ensure that all stakeholders are comfortable with new elements before adding others.

Hopefully in sharing how my clinic adopted ZEISS VERACITY Surgery Planner piece by piece, new and potential users can better imagine how this framework will fit in their practice.

Before ZEISS VERACITY Surgery Planner arrives at your practice, the ZEISS team works with your clinic to tailor the product to your preferences. ZEISS delivers a customized digital solution calibrated to the various platforms you use in presurgical assessment, connected to your EHR of choice, and preloaded with your preferred formulas. Remember, ZEISS VERACITY Surgery Planner is compatible with both ZEISS and non-ZEISS technologies, and works best when all your practice’s platforms link to it.

After ensuring that all your hardware and software are connected to your new central data hub, spend some time familiarizing yourself with ZEISS VERACITY Surgery Planner’s interface. Perform a few dry runs in which you pull up the profiles of various patients. You may be surprised at how seamlessly this solution organizes information, concisely collating data points that were previously diffusely spread across various locations.

And be sure to check out the chat box in the lower corner for real-time support. Your interactions will be with a live ZEISS team member (not a bot!) who will help you with specific queries as you orient yourself with ZEISS VERACITY Surgery Planner.

This key function allows surgeons to efficiently craft cataract surgery plans for patients based on the various data inputs from your hardware platforms and EHR.

With the patient’s biometric and anatomic data in one place, you can select various lenses and formulas to predict how they will influence outcomes. For patients with astigmatism, let ZEISS VERACITY Surgery Planner calculate how toric lens outcomes might differ from outcomes after arcuate incisions.

We find ZEISS VERACITY at Center for Sight smooths over frustrating inefficiencies (eg, looking up formula calculators online), makes surgery safer (eg, significantly reduces the risk of transcription errors), and creates a more streamlined, bespoke experience for both patient and surgeon.

At my clinic, we rely on patient questionnaires within ZEISS VERACITY Surgery Planner to help determine which lens is best for a given patient by gauging patient expectations and lifestyle goals. Answers are entered directly into ZEISS VERACITY by patients or by staff members who prompt questions to patients; in my clinic, we leverage iPads so that patients and staff can fill out their questionnaires from anywhere in the practice.

Answers from these questionnaires help ZEISS VERACITY Surgery Planner recommend a lens for each patient. That is not to say that ZEISS VERACITY thinks for the surgeon (as the surgeon, you verify that the chosen lens is right for the patient and adjust the recommended surgical plan as needed), but in my clinic, I have found that ZEISS VERACITY Surgery Planner’s recommendations are frequently the conclusions I would have arrived at myself.

Now that the patient has filled out the patient questionnaire and you have approved the cataract surgical plan that was recommended as a result of all the data inputs, it’s time to take ZEISS VERACITY Surgery Planner into the OR.

Some ORs are equipped for digital interfacing, thereby allowing surgeons to pull up the surgical plan through ZEISS VERACITY Surgery Planner on a nearby screen. In other cases, surgeons prefer to print the surgical plan and bring an analog copy with them to the OR. Either option works just fine through this solution.

A bevy of other ZEISS VERACITY Surgery Planner features—from creating postoperative report templates for automated generation after surgery to tracking postoperative results and adjusting A-constants—may improve your clinical flow or empower you to improve your outcomes. As you gain more confidence with this digital solution, you'll customize your instance to fit your specific clinical needs.

ZEISS VERACITY Surgery Planner isn’t an all-or-nothing offering. Rather, surgeons select which elements are best for their practice, and add features as their needs change. With ZEISS VERACITY Surgery Planner, you might start small—but don’t be surprised if you soon incorporate this new data hub into multiple aspects of your practice, as we did.

^{The statements of the author reflect only his personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of any institution with whom he is affiliated.
The author has a contractual or other financial relationship with Carl Zeiss Meditec, Inc. and has received financial support.}