COVID-19 Changed the Operating Room

For many hospitals, Operating Room (OR) traffic control has rapidly transformed from being a long-term goal to an urgent need. The need to conserve Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and limit exposure to infectious disease without compromising patient care or staff safety is now of paramount importance.

It is well understood that routes of viral transmission include respiratory droplets, aerosolization, direct surface to surface, and fomites. The Surgical Infection Society recommends that doors stay closed in Operating Rooms and that limiting traffic to only essential patient care is important.¹

Minimizing unnecessary traffic within and around the OR can help reduce the spread of germs and risk of spreading infection, this is especially important during high activity, such as setting up and patient prep. Every time the door to the OR is opened, the air quality and positive pressurization is reduced, thus increasing the risk of infection. Minimizing unnecessary traffic also reduces room interruptions that can have a distracting effect on intraoperative personnel.

On April 17, the American College of Surgeons, the American Hospital Association, the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses (AORN), and the American Society of Anesthesiologists issued a Roadmap for Resuming Elective Surgery. They state: “Facilities with videoconferencing capabilities in their operating rooms should work with medical device representatives and clinicians to utilize virtual support in surgical cases where remote attendance does not compromise patient safety or privacy.”²

How STERIS Operating Room Integration Can Help You Adapt

As guidelines evolve, our HexaVue™ OR Integration platform can easily help you keep pace. New features and capabilities can be quickly added to your HexaVue Integration platform now and into the future, seamlessly adapting to the changing needs of your OR.

With both synchronous and asynchronous modalities, STERIS OR Integration can help you:

Minimize OR Traffic

Operating Room staff will have fewer reasons to exit the OR with the ability to easily access computers and hospital information systems like: EMR or other software on a PC located beyond the room from a simple interface within it.

STERIS allows you to track the status of each room, locate equipment, and communicate with the staff inside the OR without needing to enter it, aiding in Operating Room management. Instead, authorized staff can follow along and support any procedure remotely through secure remote view of in-OR devices, remote monitoring of OR status, remote equipment location, and videoconferencing.

Unlike many other solutions, these remote tools can all be accessed quickly and securely from virtually anywhere using a computer, tablet, and or phone.

STERIS can resolve many technical support requests without entering the OR through our rapid response technical support and remote system diagnostics.

Conserve Medical Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)

Authorized, non-essential staff or students can remotely communicate with the team inside the OR and observe the procedure within it by selecting and viewing OR imaging devices (i.e. room camera, in-light camera, Surgical and large format displays, endoscope, microscope, fluoroscope, ultrasound, robot, etc.)

This means that PPE can be preserved for only those that are essential to the procedure, without compromising the value that comes with having guests present to learn, collaborate, or comfort family members who are no longer permitted inside the room (i.e. Parent/Child).

Collaborate Remotely from the OR

HexaVue™ Connect Software allows you to securely access information and media in the OR from virtually anywhere via smartphone, tablet or PC. Through driving visibility across the perioperative workflow, HexaVue Connect software supports virtual peer collaboration.

• Operating Room staff can securely videoconference in real-time with staff in another OR or even remote experts across the world
• Videos and images taken during the procedure can be stored, annotated, and securely shared with remote colleagues or students
• Media capture and management features allow you to record your procedure for grand rounds, presentations, or for other clinical and educational needs
• Patient information and identifying features can be hidden when sharing video or images from a live procedure

Optimize Operating Room Efficiency

Designed to empower and connect all roles within and around the OR, STERIS OR Integration Systems help to minimize the complexity that consumes daily life in the OR and allow you to focus on delivering consistent, uncompromised patient care during an uncertain time.

• If a procedure requires advice from a colleague, the surgeon can communicate with this expert immediately, hands-free, without waiting for them to enter the OR
• The HexaVue Integration System puts the clinical information and control you need at your fingertips, whether you are inside the OR at the HexaVue touch panel or beyond the OR on your mobile device
• Through a connection to the electronic medical record, the integrated OR can be automatically readied for each scheduled procedure

At the close of each procedure, captured images can be remotely shared with the patient’s family and stored in the Electronic Medical Record.

Experience matters now more than ever. We have a history of helping you connect.

There is a big difference between a company providing a feature and a company with the experience to stand behind that feature. As the ability to connect virtually becomes a standard of care, STERIS will be with you every step of the way with expert design, hardware installation, HexaVue Connect Software implementation, service, in-field support, and remote support.

As a leader in OR Integration, STERIS has:

• Installed over 6,000 operating rooms across North America
• Deployed and supported telehealth, communication, and distance-learning solutions at many of the nation’s leading hospitals and medical centers
• Over a decade of experience in working closely with Information Technology (IT) teams to ensure seamless and secure connectivity to your hospital network and information systems
• Delivered a proven, standards-driven approach to videoconferencing and streaming that’s designed for real OR/hospital environments
• The only leading integration platform built on the secure LINUX CentOS operating system

Learn more about STERIS OR Integration

Learn about other STERIS Surgical offerings including Operating Room Environment solutions, Surgical Displays and Monitors, Surgical Lighting Systems, Surgical Tables, and more here.

References

¹ Surgical Infection Society Guidance for Operative and Peri-Operative Care of Adult Patients Infected by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) 30 Apr 2020 https://doi.org/10.1089/ sur.2020.101

² https://www.facs.org/covid-19/clinical-guidance/roadmap-elective-surgery