Cameras and recorders will capture video and audio from the operating rooms, alongside patient data like imaging and monitor readings. The system will be deployed across hospitals run by Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi, PureHealth, Mediclinic, and NMC Healthcare.

Initially, the platform is designed to be a learning tool: Surgeons can pull up recordings of their own procedures, share clips with colleagues, and analyze where they erred or did something well. Pre-operative team briefings, typically coordinated over WhatsApp or handwritten notes, can be digitized and stored in one place.

Longer-term, Peter Schulman, the chief scientific officer at Johnson & Johnson, described a system capable of real-time guidance, similar to what an airline pilot has in a cockpit, with a navigation layer that can locate anatomical structures based on a patient’s file before a surgeon cuts, reducing the risk of accidental injury. Ultimately, the ambition is for a connected operating room where every device and data source communicates with a surgeon in real time. But for now, Schulman said, the goal is to get surgeons comfortable with the basics.

Abu Dhabi hospitals that otherwise compete for patients will share their operating room data under standards set by the Department of Health, which oversees how the information is collected, stored, and used.

“We might reach a point of recommending in clinical guidelines: certain procedures, do with approach A; certain procedures, you might need approach B,” Al Ghaithi said, adding that the regulator may also dictate the best time for certain surgeries, once there’s enough data to see if time of day affects outcomes. “We will start understanding why this patient recovered faster, and why the other patient didn’t.”

The department has already shown it will act on data, Al Ghaithi said, such as when it lowered the recommended age for breast cancer screening from 50 to 40 after it found cases appearing in younger women than existing guidelines anticipated.