Outpatient Surgery Magazine

Special Edition: Hot Technology - April 2020 - Subscribe to Outpatient Surgery Magazine

Outpatient Surgery Magazine, providing current information on Surgical Services, Surgical Facility Administration, Outpatient Surgery News and Trends, OR Excellence and more.

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ers to hold surgical teams accountable for being actively involved in the process. Smart logic, for example, could require them to answer specific questions about the patient and procedure instead of mind- lessly responding to a series of "yes" or "no" questions (What is the correct site and who marked it? Who is this patient? What is the fire risk score?). "We're trying to figure out how to make the process as efficient as possible without compromising the quality of the data collected," says Ms. Lindenauer. Toward the end of a case, members of the surgical team could also use the smart speaker to call the nurse's station to let a turnover team know the OR needs to be cleaned and the PACU to let nurses there know a patient will be arriving soon. They can also ask a nurse to inform loved ones in the waiting room that a case is running late or that everything is moving along as expected. Smart speakers are being tried in other patient care areas — pre- op and post-op hold some potential — so patients can verbally request assistance from a staff member, get answers to frequently asked questions, turn on a television in the room, listen to music or play interactive games such as Jeopardy. Hurdles to clear None of the commercially available smart speakers are HIPAA com- pliant, which is an issue that needs to be addressed before the tech- nology becomes commonplace in sensitive OR environments. Ways to authenticate the team members who use smart speakers to document events during surgery or request information must also be solved. A possible short-term solution, according to Ms. Lindenauer, is to have staff members end their interactions by stating their employee badge numbers. 1 0 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • A P R I L 2 0 2 0

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