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Development of an intelligent and multi-hospital end-to-end surgical process management system

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - OR4.0 (Development of an intelligent and multi-hospital end-to-end surgical process management system)

Reporting period: 2019-06-01 to 2020-05-31

The surgical process is the most complex and costly of all the activities performed in a hospital. Generally speaking, this process starts when patients are transferred from the hospital’s wards to the pre-operative area where they are anaesthetized, while waiting for an available operating room. After surgery, a bed will be found in the Post Anesthesia Care Unit (PACU), commonly called the recovery room, to deal with any immediate postoperative problems. After that, patients are returned to different specialized areas in the hospital. This is done with hundreds of patients every day involving tens of professionals, which includes different nurses, medical doctors, anesthesiologists, surgeons, porters and cleaning team working finely coordinated to deliver good healthcare results and satisfaction for patients and relatives.
Surprisingly, the most complex and expensive process in hospitals is still managed in a rudimentary way by relying on professionals repeatedly phoning each other to look for available people (i.e. porters), information and essential equipment in time demanding situations. Inefficiencies such are errors in scheduling and frequently delays in operating rooms are very common and have a major effect on cancellations, patient flow and resource utilisation. This compromises the performance of hospitals and a good quality of service for patients and families.
This is even more concerning in a time when waiting lists for surgical procedures are raising due to an increase of healthcare demand. MYSPHERA has identified this need, which has no current solution in the market. By leveraging its cutting-edge hospital patient tracking technology, MYSPHERA proposed a unique and pioneering service in this project that will change the delivery of healthcare in hospitals. Automating information, events and tasks will transform hospitals into proactive organisations.
The main goal of this project is to develop and validate a new pioneering intelligent management platform and its applications leveraging the context information provided by hospitals’ IT systems to automate the coordination between professionals through the surgical process. At these moments, the platform and the different applications are almost finished and prepared to be piloted in two hospitals in Spain and Belgium. The project is being so successful, that MYSPHERA has decided to establish itself in the UK and France to attend the emerging market demand for this new service.
"The first year has been predominantly a technical phase for developing the OR4.0 platform and the different features related to the solution. This is where most of the efforts have gone. At these moments, the solution is ready to be deployed.
Another important activity has been the analysis of the GDPR and HIPAA impact on the developments presented by OR4.0. MYSPHERA contacted a specialised company on cybersecurity to elaborate the list of technical requirements that must be implemented by the solution to be fully compliant with latest personal information regulation. All this work has been performed in WP2. Pilots are just starting their preparations, which includes installation plans, training info and protocol and this is part of WP3. Finally, WP4 and WP5 have been very active since the beginning of the project boosting the dissemination and commercial strategy.

As the project has come to an end the following achievements have been done solution-wise:
- OR4.0 is commercially available offering a wide range of applications including nurses, doctors, porters, cleaning team, staff in the operating room
- OR4.0 has integrated the process mining analytics application from the UPV branded as Palia
- OR4.0 has been able to enable the multi-hospital solution
- OR4.0 is GDPR compliant
- OR4.0 has been installed in 5 pilot sites, two more than expected
- OR4.0's multi-hospital solution has been piloted in Vall d'Hebron's hospital umbrella (General Hospital + Hospital Pere Virgili)
- Increases of surgical performance greater than 12% have been achieved, which enables potential ROIs > 1200%

As for dissemination and exploitation results, the following are the most remarkable outcomes:
- The new solution was announced in a grand presentation in a top international congress, HIMSS
- As a result of the attraction generated by OR4.0 MYSPHERA was able to leverage 2,5MEUR of private funding in its first Venture Capital Round
- Several publications and presentations have been promoted in key conferences such as the European Healthcare Management Association Conference
- More than 10 key congresses have been attended exceeding initial targets
- Several press releases have been launched throughout the project
- A series of webinars at the end of the project have resulted in a very positive experience
- MYSPHERA has been able to boost the EC campaign on COVID-19 outbreak showing how OR4.0 could pivot to fight against the virus in hospitals, producing a new spin-off solution and two videos
- Social channels have revolutionised the way MYSPHERA is doing marketing, currently driving outbound campaigns through Pardot Salesforce platform and using an online demo to scale our marketing approach
- Before the end of the project, MYSPHERA has won its first deal in a new country, the UK, in the NHS East Kent University Hospitals. Pilot sites are in process of signing a license to carry on using the solution.
- MYSPHERA has generated a funnel in Europe of 60 MEUR for the next 3 years.
- Before ending the project, OR4.0 has been shortlisted as the best ""Design Innovation for Quality Improvement"" in 2020 by the European Healthcare Design group."
"OR4.0 is shaking the state of the art of patient flow solutions being unparalleled worldwide and giving MYSPHERA a leading position in the digitalization and the boost of “smart-hospitals”. The automation of the surgical process provided by MYSPHERA is already revealing the staggering evidence of an increase of 12,5% on OR utilization performance, which has an enormous impact on the hospital expenditure and the reduction of the waiting lists. More relevant impacts have been:
- The number of surgical interventions in the wing where OR4.0 was implemented increased by more than 1000 moving from 8154 to 9200 in 2019.
- The new intervention based on OR4.0 has revealed saving up to 140.77 € per surgical procedure.
- Reduction of 3 hours every day on nurse time on tiresome data inputting tasks
- Improving surgical staff satisfaction and empowerment
- Increased satisfaction of citizens and families with the new application that allow to follow the surgical process anywhere out of the hospital.
- Increased patient security by design as with the new location solution is not likely to get the wrong surgery to a patient. This is a critical ""never event"".

Other stunning impacts are related to the environment. OR4.0 was integrated with the climate system of the surgical unit (one of the major energy consumers in the hospital). With this change we obtained a staggering saving of around 2147MWh in 2018, representing more than 30% of the total energy spending in that surgery unit alone, which has 19 ORs. That represents a waste per OR of 113MWh/year and a cost reduction of € 150.000 per year. This result directly impacts the European Green Deal boosted by the European Commission."
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OR4.0 playmobil scale model