A hand gesture system for medical images manipulation called “Gestix” was tested during a brain biopsy surgery. In the in vivo experiment, this type of interface avoided surgeon’s focus shift and change of location while achieving, rapid intuitive reaction, and natural interaction. The major advantages of this approach was naturalness (surgeon use his hands), and rapid reaction (hand gesture co...

Operating rooms are important assets for hospitals as they generate the largest revenue and, at the same time, produce the largest cost for hospitals. The model presented in this paper helps make capacity planning decisions on the combination of open operating rooms (ORs) and estimated overtime to satisfy the allocated OR time to each specialty. The model combines both decisions on determining ...

A major factor contributing to the high number of cancelled operations in hospitals is the unavailability of beds on hospital wards for post-operative recovery. In this research, we model the effects of the operating theatre timetable on the demand for beds and show that a timetable can be produced that leads to a reduced number of cancelled operations whilst also levelling the demand for beds ...

OBJECTIVE To review the effect of interventions designed to decrease turnover time in infants and children (median age, 2.6 years; range, 1 month to 10 years) who required examinations under anesthesia. METHODS Five efficiency interventions (3 anesthesia providers for 2 rooms, digital remote communication, change in patient scheduling, standardization of case order, and streamlining administr...

There is a growing proportion of elderly which increases the demand for health care. As a consequence health care costs are rising and the need for hospital resource planning seems urgent. Different aspects (often conflicting) such as patient demand, clinical need and political ambitions must be considered. In this paper we propose a model for analyzing hospital surgical suite with focus on ope...

In this work discrete event simulation models developed in Witness are discussed and used to evaluate performance indices of interest related to the scheduling of operating theatre activities for surgical departments; in particular the attention is focused on the wards’ productivity in terms of utilization rate, throughput and overruns. The first model reproduces the behaviour of the operating ...

A middle aged woman was scheduled for supracervical lymph node biopsy under local anesthesia. A scheduling conflict caused a significant operating room delay and she became very nervous. A surgical resident asked for anesthetic assistance in calming the patient. Assured that the case was under local anesthesia only, the anesthesiologist gave the patient soda to drink. In the operating room, the...

Surgical staff is considered to have several ergonomic risk factors, but their physical workload and musculoskeletal health have seldom been evaluated. Clinical examinations of neck and upper extremities were performed in 99 theatre nurses and 93 assisting nurses, all females. Their physical workload was assessed by questionnaire, and by technical measurements of postures, movements and muscula...

UNLABELLED Economic considerations suggest that it is desirable to keep operating rooms fully used when staffed, but the optimum utilization of an operating room (OR) is not known. We created a simulation of an OR to define optimum utilization. We set operational goals of having cases start within 15 min of the scheduled time and of having the cases end no more than 15 min past the scheduled en...