Upcoming Olympic Games Expected to Boost Brazil’s Healthcare System

By MedImaging International staff writers
Posted on 31 May 2016

As part of the preparations for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, a leading healthcare equipment and services provider will donate more than USD 2 million worth of new medical devices to a hospital in Rio de Janeiro.

The donation will include four robotic surgical arms, six surgery monitors, six anesthetic machines, one Computed Tomography (CT) scanner, three digital X-Ray scanners, three ultrasound devices, and software for secure storage and management of patients’ scans.

Image: Surgeons in Brazil’s Souza Aguiar Hospital in Rio de Janeiro (Photo courtesy of GE Healthcare).

The high-tech medical equipment will be donated to the Souza Aguiar Hospital (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) by GE Healthcare (Chalfont St Giles, Buckinghamshire, UK). Souza Aquiar is the second largest emergency care center in Latin America, and has over 600 beds, and receives more than 7,500 patients every month.

The surgical arms are intended help doctors at the hospital perform 30% more surgeries, and reduce waiting times. The imaging equipment is also intended to reduce the radiation dose while doubling the number of X-Ray, CT, and ultrasounds exams carried out in the hospital. The new anesthetic equipment and surgical monitors can help clinicians provide optimized doses of anesthesia and shorten the time patients have to stay in the hospital by up to two days.

Daurio Speranzini Jr., president, GE Healthcare in Latin America, said, “This technology will give Brazilian healthcare some of the most advanced medical capabilities in the world. And it enters Brazil’s medical scene at a crucial time: the country is in the grips of a financial crisis and this year will see a huge number of tourists flooding Brazil for the Games. In particular, we hope to help the hospital to diminish its waiting line both for diagnostic imaging and for surgery. As this is a donation to a reference traumatology center, the availability of equipment such as surgical arms, anesthetics and state-of-the-art monitors is extremely important to help high-complexity procedures as well as minimally-invasive surgeries.”

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