Apella Devotes AI to Process Improvement in Operating Rooms

Artificial Intelligence can exploit fairly simple technologies to create significant efficiencies. For operating rooms, Apella Technology uses four cameras, placed around the walls, to collect data that saves precious time. I recently talked to David Schummers, founder and CEO of Apella, about their new AI-based service for hospitals. He discussed the kinds of problems they are trying to solve. Time Is of the Essence In ORs as in many other areas of health care, too many tasks that could be done well by computers are being assigned instead to people, with resulting errors and inefficiencies. Schummers estimates that half of clinicians’ time is spent on documentation and communications. Take a basic question: When has the patient been brought into the operating room? Currently, the person who brought in the patient has to update the record. Even then, someone has to fetch the doctor or place a phone call. Thus, patients often wait several minutes for the arrival of the doctor. Sometimes, Schummers says, patients are even anesthetized for long periods before surgery starts, which is both expensive and dangerous. A lot of ORs are empty longer than necessary, perhaps because clinicians don’t know that the cleaners have finished. Wasted time means lost revenue. But the range of simple communication tasks assigned to staff also takes up time they want to spend with patients. Both patient care and staff morale can improve from efficiencies in OR use. Furthermore, hospi...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - Category: Information Technology Authors: Tags: AI/Machine Learning Analytics/Big Data Clinical Health IT Company Healthcare IT Hospital - Health System Apella Technology Cameras David Schummers Healthcare AI Healthcare Monitoring Healthcare OR Healthcare Video Cameras Operati Source Type: blogs