Major overhaul for Addenbrooke’s theatre system

Addenbrooke’s Hospital is upgrade its TheatreMan theatre management system to improve both the day-to-day information available to clinicians and longer term planning.

The flagship Cambridge teaching hospital was previously using a dated UNIX version of TheatreMan, which was not in line with other IT developments, and will now to move to the Windows version of the system.

Addenbrooke’s’ TheatreMan project manager, Paul Srahan, told E-Health Insider: “There were a multitude of pressing reasons why we needed to upgrade from our previous UNIX version of TheatreMan to the current generation MS Windows version.

“These include the fact that we had been running the UNIX version of the system for an extremely long time and the system and some of the system’s hardware components had effectively outlived their expected lifecycle. Additionally, the upgrade from UNIX to a Windows/SQL approach brought us in line with the [Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation] Trust’s Programme of IT development.”

The system is used to help manage over 30 operating systems across the trust.

Srahan added: “The upgrade enables us to broaden and improve the accuracy of the data set which we need to capture to improve our resource usage, overall efficiency and the quality of patient care which we provide.

“We are also extremely keen to implement an integrated advanced patient scheduling system for operative procedures which the upgrade will enable us to do. The web scheduler is a key deliverable of the upgrade project for our inpatient services. Having easily accessible information for all key staff should significantly improve the planning and management of our theatre resources.”

The system is being implemented across the trust in batches of four theatres at a time. As the system is an upgrade, minimal training is required but support staff are on the hand to assist in any support or training issues during the go-live phases.

Trisoft, developers of TheatreMan, have made available a programme of three days formal training for each of the five theatre departments within the trust.

Once fully in place, the system will be integrated with National Programme for IT applications within the trust.

Srahan said: “The anticipated key benefits are the facilitation for an enhanced data set capture, impending system developments will hopefully help simplify existing approaches to operative procedure data capture, system development should enable a streamlining of other data capture approaches and we will also over time be able to make more clinical information available to clinicians.

“The management of theatres will not change radically as a result of the upgrade. However, the system will become a much more useful tool for improved day-to-day operational management and also longer term planning and decision making.”

Trisoft’s Nasir Hyder, said: “TheatreMan is a modular, flexible and adaptable theatre and day surgery management system specifically designed with a comprehensive set of features to enable total management of the patient episode in a surgical environment.

“The primary purpose of TheatreMan is to schedule and manage patients and resources effectively and efficiently and it is designed to report on all activity that is captured during the patient episode for clinical and management purposes and includes real-time patient data capture. Upgrading to the Windows/SQL approach will help make life much easier for users at Addenbrooke’s.”

The system is currently live within the two main trust departments and implementation is expected to be completed by the end of the month.

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Trisoft