Date:   Tuesday 17 August
Time:  12.30
Venue: Dorothy Stopford Price Seminar Room, Trinity Health Sciences Building, St. James's Hospital
Title:    Research on Multidisciplinary team meetings at Karolinska Hospital, Sweden

Dr Kristina Groth will present her research at the gastro surgical department (Gastro) at Karolinska. Gastro is responsible for highly specialised care in the upper gastrointestinal tract (liver, pancreas and oesophagus) within the Stockholm region. Gastro developed a patient care pathway that includes collaborative activities with the local hospitals that refer patients. For the patient it is more convenient if they can visit the local hospital for examinations, but surgery is always conducted at Karolinska. The research has been conducted since 2006 and focuses on the patient care pathway developed and used by Gastro and on the Multidisciplinary Team Meetings (MDTMs) within the patient care pathway.

Dr Groth will also present different prototypes that have been developed within her research projects. One prototype aims at making it possible for the participants at the MDTMs to interact with the images that the radiologist is presenting, e.g., zooming, scrolling, pointing, drawing. The other prototype introduces another modality used to interact with the information presented in radiology pictures: the developement a haptic model based on what is shown on MRI/CT scans using contrast. With a haptic device it is then possible to "touch" blood vessels, tumours etc. Some preliminary results from studies of surgeons using these prototypes will be presented.

Dr. Kristina Groth is a senior researcher at the Royal Institute of Technology and at Karolinska Institutet. She also works at the Karolinska University Hospital as a project leader for innovation development. Her background is in computer science and she has a PhD in Human Computer Interaction.