A subsidiary of healthcare-focused integration and audiovisual production company Careprod, Careprod Technologies develops innovative, automated solutions tailored to operating rooms and medical videoconferencing. The Montpellier-based company has a presence in 15 countries and participates in the NEXT French Healthcare program, a startup acceleration initiative that helps French digital health and medical technology companies expand in new international markets.
Careprod Technologies’ flagship product is the remote medical proctoring solution now known as Orsync. First named Skill Assist and subsequently Lynks before its latest rebranding, Orsync is a 4G/5G mobile video assistance solution that enables on-site and off-site surgeons to securely train, monitor, collaborate and communicate with each other in real time.
Originally designed to meet neurovascular needs for a leading medical device manufacturer, Orsync has evolved to meet the requirements for a wide range of surgeries. Currently, the solution has enabled over 299 cases to be broadcast live from operating rooms to specialists around the world, and more than a hundred kits have been deployed worldwide.
The Challenge
When Careprod Technologies was developing Orsync, they needed flexible video connectivity solutions for bringing diverse signals into the system from a variety of medical equipment. And of course, given the critical nature of medical use cases, video quality and reliability were also paramount.
“When connecting to medical devices, the frame rates and video formats are often different than standard video signals,” said Loic Lalet, CEO of Careprod Technologies. “Robustness and reliability in handling these specialized video signals.is crucial for medical applications, where they need to be transmitted without any loss of data or signal degradation.”
The Solution
Careprod Technologies chose Magewell products for their robustness, reliability, and high-quality video capture and distribution capabilities. Magewell capture, encoding and streaming products are tightly integrated into the Orsync solution. Each Orsync kit is equipped with an Eco Capture Dual HDMI M.2 video capture card, Ultra Stream live streaming encoder, and one or more Ultra Encode HDMI live media encoders.
The Eco Capture card enables users to connect HDMI video feeds from any medical equipment directly to the Orsync application running on a portable CPU unit. Eco Capture’s ultra-compact form factor (22x80mm) made it ideal for incorporation into the small host system.
HDMI or SDI video feeds from additional medical equipment can be connected to the standalone Ultra Encode units, which encode the source video into NDI®|HX streams and transmit them to Orsync over Wi-Fi. An Ultra Stream unit embedded within the host CPU unit encodes a dedicated video output from the system’s Nvidia CPU for RTMP streaming and recording of the entire session.
The Results
Careprod Technologies has been completely satisfied with how Magewell solutions have enabled them to meet their business goals. “Magewell’s products have been able to handle the unique requirements of medical video distribution, providing reliable, high-quality video capture and distribution even in demanding environments,” said Lalet. “Magewell’s devices have the flexibility to handle a wide range of video formats, resolutions, and frame rates, including interlaced video and specialized formats such as non-standard frame rates.”
Careprod Technologies has integrated the Magewell products directly into the Orsync application using Magewell’s comprehensive SDK and APIs. “This has allowed us to have complete control over the configuration and management of the video capture and encoding process,” Lalet explained. “With this level of direct communication, we can optimize the performance of the Magewell devices and ensure a seamless integration with our software to grab the video feeds, stream via a Wowza platform, and record locally on a USB stick.”
Lalet’s satisfaction with Magewell also goes beyond the products. “It is mandatory for us to feel that the development team behind the devices are available,” said Lalet. “We have had the chance to chat with Magewell developers to help us better use the API when needed. This has helped us deliver better solutions to our customers, building trust that helps us expand our business globally. And the support we receive from Magewell’s EU distributor MVD Europe (MVDE) has also been outstanding.”