Untethered and HIPAA-compliant Interactive Livestreaming of Surgery to Residents and Medical Students

Traditional livestreaming of surgery to an audience requires stationary video broadcasting infrastructure, with viewers congregating in front of a screen, while audiovisual technicians provide support in the background. In recent years, livestreaming technologies from cameras to teleconference platforms have advanced dramatically, even to allow for compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 with web-based encryption. The objective of this article is to show that livestreaming surgery in medical education is possible using portable devices, with the resident and medical students as audience at home interacting on their computer or smart devices. The surgeon utilizes a head-mounted camera transmitting video feed using a wireless transmitter broadcasting to a laptop computer, which is hosting a Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act–compliant version of Zoom. The entire setup is portable, and the surgeon is tethered neither to a cord nor to the institution’s audiovisual enterprise. This prototype setup allows the surgeon to broadcast live surgery interactively at any time and from any operating room with remote medical students and surgical residents. We posit that our medical education industry would need to condense the devices into a turnkey livestreaming camera system with optimized frames per second reception.