The Belfast theatre management system

Green Park Healthcare Trust in Belfast, has been shortlisted for a 2005 HITEA award in the category of Best use of IT in secondary and tertiary care for its theatre-management system.

The system — developed inhouse through close collaboration between IT, clinical and medical personnel — was designed to collect accurate and timely information for effective co-ordination of the patient’s surgical journey.

The development project’s main objectives included full theatre scheduling, tracking and traceability of surgical equipment, wound-site surveillance and reporting nationally. The system allows the maintenance and control of implant stock and enables patients to be identified in case of recall situations. System functionality also includes the management of information relating to bone grafting and the harvesting of donations, direct input to the national joint-implant register and clinical and managerial audit and reporting facilities. Data is collected using the Trust’s main clinical information system, the Belfast Orthopaedic Information System. These benefits have been delivered without imposing additional workload on clinical staff, especially during the surgical procedure.

Realtime theatre note reporting is now possible and cleverly designed proformas minimise the need for typing. Realtime reporting also keeps high-dependency-unit staff informed of what to expect upon completion of the procedure and relatives can be kept informed throughout.

Future plans include a module to integrate anaesthetic data capture from the existing commercial system into the new theatre-management system.