Electronic documentation in endoscopy: present status and future perspectives from a company standpoint.

At the beginning of the development of endoscopic information systems all companies were technology-oriented. Today, we see a change from technology to content orientation, the same development which is seen in internet technology. In future systems, it will not be the software that makes a difference but the contents. Contents means not only patient data but also algorithms for feature extraction within large databases with reference images, for example [20]. The automatic recognition of features, such as a complication rate that is too high or a correlation of a certain disease with an endoscopic finding, will be part of a content-based approach. It means that content will also be the knowledge base which has to be developed for future systems. The system of the future will be much more intelligent and less software technology-oriented.