Apella Studies Find Higher Surgical Volume at Houston Methodist

In a press release, Apella announced two studies evaluating its ambient AI system in operating rooms at Houston Methodist. One study found a 7% increase in surgical case volume, equal to about 300 additional cases per year, after the system was deployed in a 15 room cardiothoracic operating suite.

The lead study was published in the Journal of Imaging and was authored by Houston Methodist researchers. The researchers used a difference in differences method to compare the operating suite with similar sites that had not yet deployed the system, while accounting for systemwide and seasonal trends.

A second study, published in Perioperative Care and Operating Room Management, evaluated Apella's Flagged Cases tool across six Houston Methodist hospitals. The tool uses a predictive model trained on nearly 700,000 surgeries to identify cases likely to be scheduled inaccurately.

For flagged cases, Houston Methodist improved scheduling accuracy by 40%, with mean absolute error falling from 57.4 minutes to 34.2 minutes. The study also found a 46 percentage point reduction in late operating room days, with no reduction in case volume.