In the healthcare industry, there have been several initiatives taking place to improve patients’ overall safety and satisfaction: from integrated software and services solutions to health information exchanges (HIE) of healthcare-related data among facilities, on to electronic medical records (EMR) and the medical hardware praised by surgeons. So far, health tech has come a long way and has become critically important to any healthcare stakeholder moving forward.
Parallax Enterprises, LLC, a healthcare technology company based in Maryland, is one of those organizations dedicated to increasing communication in the operating room and looking at the problem of preventable medical errors in a new way. The goal is to decrease preventable patient morbidity and mortality using the CHaRM system, an Aviation-Inspired Patient Safety System that is modeled after an airplane safety checklist. “[It] is a highly advanced information-gathering platform, which tracks and records every detail of a procedure, with respect to both the patient and the physician,” explains the company.
Parallax Enterprises chief executive officer, Dr. Jeffrey Woolford, says “[The Consolidated Healthcare and Resource Management System (CHaRM)] is a fully automated eChecklist system that allows physicians to interact with it during the procedure using gesture and voice commands.” It is a technology solution that will revolutionize the surgical suite and enhance patient safety by decreasing preventable medical errors and save lives. Physicians and their staff can use it to have access to the information contained in a patient’s electronic medical record (EMR) and associate the information, images or documents with the CHaRM system.
Making the checklist digital will help doctors figure out the best set of steps, while making it easier for more surgeons to follow best practices in procedures, says Dr. Tas Saliaris, the chief medical officer at Parallax. Physicians incorporating the CHaRM system are able to draft their own checklists, adapt existing lists, and update as needed to fit their own procedures. This is possible thanks to strategic partner, Amadeus Consulting, who continues the development of the system that will build CHaRM across an HIPAA-compliant cloud system. The system will bring customizable and interactive checklists, a surgical “Heads-up Display” (HUD), hands-free and voice activated control, and all the essential patient information, in one central location.
Jay Millard, chief operating officer for Amadeus Consulting, says its team has created a revolutionary technology, “Gold Release” software, for CHaRM, which helps reduce medical mistakes. This applies “incorporated gesture-sensitive and voice-recognition technology using Kinect for Windows, which allows surgeons to run through a customized e-checklist within a sterile operating room environment,” he explains. Medical staff will be able to access patients’ info using intuitive navigation screens “with a Windows Presentation Foundation graphical subsystem and Kendo UI framework.”
The display that the surgeon sees includes the following information:
- Patient name
- Allergies
- A full body image with surgery site highlighted in red
- A list of people in the OR
- A checklist in the middle in the biggest window
- A list of tools needed for the surgery
- An image gallery on the right
Even more, there is also an “operative risk management bar” that, according to Woolford, changes from green to red depending on the relative risk of an accident.
Dr. Woolford points out that Amadeus Consulting, which has recently announced the “Gold Release” of CHaRM, has helped Parallax take aviation-style checklists and makes them uniquely medical and easily accessible by anyone in the treatment chain. This not only provides exceptional information tracking and data collection, but also has the ability to share the e-checklists among all Parallax customers too.
Mr. Millard is excited to have been part of the process in creating a revolutionary technology software for the CHaRM (as part of a collaborative effort), and to have Parallax connect this system with medical professionals in facilities around the world. He has no doubt CHaRM will revolutionize the health industry and enhance patient safety by decreasing preventable errors. According to the Journal of Patient Safety, a whopping 210,000 to 440,000 deaths are attributable to preventable medical errors occur in hospitals every year.
Edited by
Adam Brandt
