Cetrea Surgical is an advanced logistics and communication system for a surgical ward and the departments which cooperate with the surgical ward. Cetrea Surgical is a new generation of systems for hospitals. Cetrea Surgical is not a booking or planning system, but a system specifically designed to handle work situations, which are influenced by continuous changes and where there is a need for large employee groups to create and maintain an overview of all the tasks at hand. With Cetrea Surgical, employees can keep their work optimized at any time.

"Cetrea Surgical has improved our working environment drastically. The work has become less stressful and we have increased the number of operated patients per day" - Marie-Louise Ulsøe, Head Nurse.

There is clinical evidence supporting that Cetrea Surgical improves the overview of all employees involved in the work in a surgical ward. The system optimizes communication and coordination and thus makes it possible to handle both minor and major changes and acute incidents more effectively in the daily schedule. Cetrea Surgical is based on the underlying Cetrea technologies such as large interactive flat screens, mobile phones, tracking of clinicians and patients, video streaming as well as integration to external systems.

Cetrea Surgical is a ”Peri-operative Coordination and Communication System” (PoCCS), which optimizes coordination and complex cooperation related to the execution of surgeries in a hospital.

Cetrea Surgical is specifically designed to:

• create an overview of scheduled operations, resources, and patients in all operating rooms
• show accurate and real-time status information for operations and patients
• provide cooperating departments - like the wards, recovery, emergency and sterile department - an overview of the status on each of the operating rooms that the department is cooperating with.
• support communication between persons and places utilizing text and voice - across interactive displays and mobile clients
• show live video from each operating room and other central places at the surgical department
• provide an overview of the staff associated with the surgical department
• localization of staff members in real time
• management of acute and cancled operations
• support or ad-hoc and flexible planning on the day of surgery
• integration with mobile phones, DECT phones, and other mobile units used in the hospital.

The system distributes important information to relevant users through large interactive displays and mobile clients. This enables clinicians to maintian a shared overview and awareness of the flow of work at the surgical department, which again leads to more efficient coordination of time and life critical surgeries.

Clinical Evidence

On the basis of qualitative questionnaires, observations and interviews at the Region Hospital of Horsens (Central Denmark Region) we can document the following benefits from the use of the Cetrea Surgical[1]:

• Less stressful working day - doctors and nurses report that they have a significant reduction in every day working stress with fewer interruptions.
• Fewer interruptions - clinicians experience fewer interruptions - both from calls and by colleagues asking fewer questions, because they are able to find the necessary information on their own on the large flat screens. The interruptions are significantly reduced especially for the clinicians involved in the surgeries, which is essential in the aim of reducing errors during surgery.
• More efficient execution of the daily surgery schedule - through improved overview of both planned surgeries, persons and surgery rooms the staff can more efficiently handle the scheduled surgeries.
• More efficient handling of acute episodes such as complications during a surgery, acute patients, no show, delays and surgeons not able to attend.
• More efficient communcation through use of multiple communication modalities such as phones (GSM, DECT), text messaging, chat, video conference, notifications.
• Unnecessary steps are reduced- it is easy to get an overview of where clinicians are on the surgical ward and thus many steps can be saved.
• Improved patient information (also for the patients family), e.g. accurate and precise information about surgery time despite lots of changes during the day.
• Real time registration of status during a surgery so that you have precise key performance indicators such as time for surgery, time for preparing the surgery room, time for cleaning etc. This can be used for adminstrative follow-up and as input for future daily planning.
• Improved hygiene in the surgery room because doors are kept closed since status of the surgery can be monitored from the coordination room and messages can be transferred through Cetrea Surgical.
  

One of the hospitals that use Cetrea Surgical is The Regional Hospital of Viborg, Skive and Kjellerup. See a small interview with their nurses below: