OPERATING ROOMS — DESIGN HISTORY
The design of the modern operating room (OR) has changed very little since the 1940’s; today’s OR is still based upon tactical considerations developed during World War II. The mission then was to design a room to permit multiple surgeries to be performed in a single room or tent at the same time.
There have been piecemeal improvements and many of the OR’s individual components have been changed and improved over the past 65 years. We have seen advances in table design, lighting systems, tableside and overhead equipment towers, surgical instruments, and anesthesia monitors.
Still the standard Operating Room is not capable of handling the explosion of new technology that drives medicine today. It does not yet utilize current information technologies or modern methods for improved sterility and new equipment competes for space in the antiquated layout. Optimus ISE™ was founded to address these problems with a thoroughly integrated approach.
Optimus Integrated Surgical Environment (ISE™ ) will provide hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) with the opportunity to make the operating room environment more conducive to optimal surgical outcomes, patient and staff safety/sterility, decreased liability, improved functional and cost efficiency, as well as overall comfort and patient satisfaction.
SAFETY
With the addition of numerous technologies such as microscopes, computerized guidance systems, ultrasound, anesthesia aids, and countless other pieces of equipment, the OR has become increasingly cluttered, raising safety hazards proportionately.
STERILITY
Operating room drug-resistant infections (“superbugs”) double the length of stay and medical costs of typical hospitalizations. The mortality rate from superbugs is approaching 90%, and is responsible for the deaths of approximately 123,000 patients per year.
SIMPLICITY
Operating room information technology is still functioning on the same level it was in the 1970s. The lack of real-time information results in an inefficient environment, leading to lost time and hospital errors. The sharing of patient information, radiology studies, test results, and pathology reports is severely limited.