Research
Why Conventional Cameras for Surgery Keep Failing—and What We’re Doing About It
Date
Aug 30, 2025
Author
Prashanth Ray
At Nuevata, we’ve spent hundreds of hours listening to surgeons, educators, and OR teams across geographies. Here’s what we’ve learned—and why we’re building differently.
19 Reasons Cameras Fail in the Field
Category | Limitation | Impact |
|---|---|---|
Power & Performance | Insufficient battery life | Interrupts recording mid-procedure; no hot-swap options |
Overheating | Risk of shutdown during long cases | |
Expensive | High upfront cost with limited ROI | |
Visual Fidelity | Low resolution | Poor detail capture; unusable for mentorship |
Brightness washout | Loss of contrast in high-intensity lighting | |
Colour imbalance | Misrepresents tissue tone and depth | |
Field of view too wide | Misses critical focal zones | |
Incorrect line of sight/parallax | Misaligned perspective; disorienting for viewers | |
Ergonomics & Workflow | Too heavy | Fatigue and discomfort for wearers |
Discomfort (other than weight) | Pressure points, heat, and restricted movement | |
Incompatible with loupes | Forces surgeons to choose between clarity and comfort | |
Obstruction by surgical team | View blocked during key moments | |
Excessive movement | Shaky footage; unusable for teaching | |
Distracting | Breaks surgical focus and flow | |
No monitoring ability | No real-time feedback or framing control | |
Data & Privacy | Data management issues | Fragmented storage, poor retrieval, no tagging |
Privacy concerns | ‘Always-on’ recording with no indicator; legal risk | |
Sterility & Safety | Sterility issues | Difficult to clean; risk of contamination |
Audio | Audio issues | Inconsistent capture; poor sync with video |
What This Tells Us
These aren’t minor inconveniences. They’re systemic failures that compromise surgical education, team communication, and patient safety. The problem isn’t just hardware—it’s a lack of modular thinking.
Nuevata’s Approach: Modular, Mentorship-Ready, Surgeon-First
We’re not building another camera. We’re building a platform that:
Adapts to the surgeon’s perspective, not the other way around
Modularizes visual capture, so teams can choose resolution, angle, and field of view per procedure
Respects privacy and sterility, with clear indicators and cleanable surfaces
Integrates seamlessly with mentorship dashboards, enabling real-time feedback and post-op review
Supports hot-swappable power and data modules, so nothing interrupts the surgical flow
