By Dr. Nick van Terheyden aka Dr. Nick
Twitter: @drnic1
Host of Dr. Nick: The Incrementalist – #TheIncrementalist
Operating Room Efficiency
On this episode I spoke to Dr. Bala Nair, Ph.D. CTO and Co-Founder of Perimatics and an Associate Professor at the University of Washington along with Dr. Rajeev Saxena, MD, MBA Anesthesiology Resident at the University of Washington. They are authors on the paper: Improving Operating Room Efficiency: Machine Learning Approach to Predict Case-Time Duration that focuses on the accurate estimation of operative case-time duration to maximize the utility of the expensive and important resource in healthcare – the Operating room.
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Their journey and connection is interesting and confirms a recurring Incremental theme of the Adjacent possible that demands you start with a basic question and what problem you are working to solve. You can hear how they approached the capture of as much data, how they combined from multiple sources and the “surprise” revelation that data from the nursing system proved to be more reliable in predicting case duration.
When they compared to the best estimates available currently (Surgeons estimating the time for a case is accurate about 1/3 of the time) they were able to achieve accuracy over 50% of the time.
Listen to hear their key learning points, what surprised them and the importance of building a coalition of support to action the results.
About the Show
For years Dr. Nick van Terheyden aka Dr. Nick, has served as a voice on the impact of new technologies on healthcare, earning a reputation as a leading authority on where the future of medicine is going. Combining powers of observation and real world experience, Dr. Nick has seen many predictions come true and makes the case that innovations in healthcare can be accomplished incrementally, not just by moonshot events. Tune in to hear Dr. Nick: The Incrementalist and his guests discuss what the future of healthcare looks like, how we will get there, and what it will take to improve healthcare for all.
This article was originally published on the Dr. Nick – The Incrementalist blog and is republished here with permission.