Perioperative Services, Massachusetts General Hospital, White 400, Boston, MA, 02114, USA.
J Med Syst. 2020 Feb 20;44(4):71. doi: 10.1007/s10916-020-1540-x.
Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) manages a large inventory of surgical equipment which must be delivered to operating rooms on-time, efficiently, and according to a set of quality standards and regulatory guidelines. In recent years, flexible scope management has become a topic of interest for many hospitals, as they face pressure to reduce costs, prevent infections that can result from mismanagement, and are under increased regulatory oversight. This work conducted at MGH proposes a novel method for surgical equipment management in a hospital. The proposed solution uses a real-time locating system to track flexible scopes, a semantic reasoning engine to determine the state of each scope, and a user interface to inform staff about necessary interventions to avoid scope expirations while maximizing efficiency. This study aimed to accomplish three primary goals. First, the study sought to improve the hospital's compliance to quality standards in order to reduce risks of infection due to expired scopes. Second, the study aimed to improve the cost-efficiency of scope disinfecting processes through more efficient inventory management. Finally, the study served as an opportunity for the hospital to establish best practices for working with the newly installed real-time locating system. The system proposed in this work was implemented at MGH on a subset of the hospital's flexible scopes. The study results demonstrated a quality compliance increase from 88.9% to 94.5%. The study also showed an estimated $17,350 annual cost savings due to more efficient scope management. Finally, the study demonstrated the feasibility, increase in regulatory compliance, and cost savings that would make this technology valuable when scaled across the hospital to other types of scopes and medical devices.
马萨诸塞州综合医院（MGH）管理着大量的手术设备库存，这些设备必须按时、高效地送到手术室，并符合一套质量标准和监管指南。近年来，灵活的器械管理已成为许多医院关注的话题，因为它们面临着降低成本、防止因管理不善而导致的感染以及加强监管的压力。这项在 MGH 进行的工作提出了一种在医院中进行手术设备管理的新方法。该解决方案使用实时定位系统来跟踪灵活的器械，使用语义推理引擎来确定每个器械的状态，并使用用户界面向工作人员通报必要的干预措施，以避免器械过期，同时最大限度地提高效率。本研究旨在实现三个主要目标。首先，研究旨在提高医院对质量标准的遵守程度，以降低因过期器械而导致感染的风险。其次，通过更有效的库存管理，提高器械消毒过程的成本效益。最后，该研究为医院提供了一个机会，使其在使用新安装的实时定位系统方面建立最佳实践。这项工作中提出的系统在 MGH 的一部分医院的灵活器械上实施。研究结果表明，质量合规性从 88.9%提高到了 94.5%。研究还表明，由于更有效的器械管理，每年可节省约 17350 美元的成本。最后，该研究证明了这项技术在整个医院扩展到其他类型的器械和医疗设备时的可行性、法规遵从性的提高和成本节约，这将使其具有价值。
