Community News
'OR of the Future' Opens in Baltimore
By Bruce E. Phillips
Aug 5, 2003, 04:14
U.S. Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), who was born at the University of Maryland Medical Center 52 years ago, praises UMMC's "Operating Rooms of the Future" during the April 28th "suture cutting."
The University of Maryland Medical Center's new operating rooms combine advanced technology and design to enhance patient safety and medical efficiency. In addition to providing improved health care for the community, the new ORs will serve as a test site for U.S. Army operating room technology.
"Operating Rooms of the Future" will open this month at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, Md. The new facility, featuring 19 large, uncluttered operating rooms, a 28-bed Post Anesthesia Care Unit, and a same-day surgery center, also will house a new Surgical Prep Center for preoperative assessments and a separate pediatric prep area exclusively for children. ( http://www.umm.edu/ ).
The new ORs, which are adjacent to the medical center's highly regarded shock trauma center, combine advanced technology and design to enhance patient safety and medical efficiency. In addition to providing improved health care for the community, the new ORs will serve as a test site for U.S. Army operating room technology.
The new operating rooms are 30 percent larger than traditional ORs and incorporate the most sophisticated lights, cameras, and computer-assisted devices available today. Four of the ORs are equipped with the infrastructure and technical equipment to provide remote viewing and conferencing world-wide. The remaining rooms are equipped with sufficient infrastructure to provide equipment support for telemedicine services in the future.
Most of the technology is "off the shelf" and wireless, so it can be replaced easily or upgraded in the future.
More innovations are planned in the coming months. Using a grant from the Verizon Foundation, the medical center will evaluate new uses of wireless communication equipment in the operating rooms to give doctors access to lab results and other patient information without interrupting direct patient care. In partnership with the Department of Defense, UMMC hopes to test a robotic system to sterilize and check instruments and help manage inventory.
Plans also are being developed to install a new information system that works like an "easy pass" on toll roads. Using a transponder attached to each patient's stretcher, it would signal the location of each patient and send all relevant medical information about that person to a computer within the operating room.
