Andrea Belardinelli

Experience of Lean Six Sigma Quality Approach to Hospital Laboratory Services

The Lean Six Sigma method is a process analysis methodology that focuses on improving customer requirements understanding, business systems, productivity, and financial performance [1]. Motorola invented Six Sigma with the goal of setting tolerance limits for defective products at 3.4 units per million.

Careggi Smart hospital: A mobile app for patients, citizens and healthcare staff

This paper presents a mobile app called “Careggi Smart Hospital” which has been developed for the Careggi Polyclinic in Florence. The application is designed for Android smartphones and tablets and it is freely downloadable from the Google Play Store. It provides various useful tools to the hospitals users such as personnel and structures finding, way-finding and the possibility to access personal medical records collected on regional electronic health record.

Lean Thinking in Hospital: Case Study at the Pathology Laboratory

When a good is produced a lot of transformations have to be made in order to satisfy client request. All of the phases are made in specific work-cells: the material is moved between the cells with an high risk of errors or lost of efficiency.

Development of a web based monitoring system for safety and activity analysis in operating theatres

BACKGROUND The management and the monitoring of the operating rooms on the part of the general management have the objective of optimizing their use and maximizing the internal safety. The expenses owed to their safe use represent, besides reimbursements coming from the surgical activity, important factors for the analysis of the medical facility. OBJECTIVE Given that it is not possible to reduce the safety, it is necessary to develop supporting systems with the aim to enhance and optimize the use of the rooms. METHODS The developed analysis model of the operating rooms in this study is based on the specific performance indicators and allows the effective monitoring of both the parameters that influence the safety (environmental, microbiological parameters) and those that influence the efficiency of the usage (employment rate, delays, necessary formalities, etc.). This allows you to have a systematic dashboard on hand for all of the OTs and, thus, organize the intervention schedules and more appropriate improvements. RESULTS A monitoring dashboard has been achieved, accessible from any platform and any device, capable of aggregating hospital information. The undertaken organizational modifications, through the use of the dashboard, have allowed for an average annual savings of 29.52 minutes per intervention and increase the use of the ORs of 5%. The increment of the employment rate and the optimization of the operating room have allowed for savings of around

Integrated HTA and FMECA Methodology for the Evaluation of Robotic Surgery

299,88 for every intervention carried out in 2013, corresponding to an annual savings of

Discrete event simulation-based approach for hospital services development and monitoring

343,362,60. CONCLUSIONS Integration dashboards, as the one proposed in this study as a prototype, represent a governance model of economically sustainable healthcare systems capable of guiding the hospital management in the choices and in the implementation of the most efficient organizational modifications.

Operating theatre model for activity monitoring and planning in hospitals

Robotic surgery has been strongly improved since the beginning of the twenty-first century and chased important level of technical and clinical performances. Within the robotic area, the most worldwide used surgical robot is the da Vinci® system made by Intuitive Surgical Inc.

A Simple Room Localization Method to Find Technology in a Big Trauma Center

Discrete event simulation techniques have been already used for many years and in several areas to improve manufacturing workflows and services provided to customers. Despite being born in the industrial environment, over the years the use of this instrument has brought great advantages in healthcare as well, by improving the efficiency of the organization in a quick and economically sustainable way.

Discrete Event Simulation Model for the Analysis of Centralized Front Office Service in a Regional Hub Hospital

Operating Theatre (OT) is one of the most complex areas within the hospital in terms of activity management and safety control. Although OT activity represents a serious issue in hospital, there is still a lack of guidelines or regulations currently available. On the other hand for post-surgery infections many studies and guidelines have been already provided, especially regarding specific prevention and control measures. Moreover the high cost deriving from the OT management represent a further key which must be precisely monitored for its heavy weight on the hospital economic balance. Hence, the main goal of this paper is to develope a supporting model, which is based on specific performance indicators, able to support health departments. The aim of the model is to monitor and control the main aspects contributing to the efficiency of OT activity. This topic allows hospital decision makers to have a usable and widely accessible tool for planning and simulating possible modifications within the OT organization. Finally, for the tool validation, the dashboard is currently being applied to a real hospital department.

A Preliminary Cost/Efficacy Analysis of MIRUS™ System for Sedation of Critical Patients

Trauma Center is a big operating theatre of over 4000 m2 on two floors and 14 operating rooms. In this context, the share of the equipment is fundamental to reduce expedition but may cause an excessive loss of time by medical staff that needs devices for the clinical therapy. Therefore, knowing localization is useful for health monitoring of important electromedical devices. In recent years, a lot of technologies have been developed for the indoor localization, like the Bluetooth wireless standard technology. In particular, Beacon technology is very interesting, which uses the Bluetooth low energy (BLE) technology. However, due to the complexity of internal ambiences, the development of an indoor localization method is always associated with various problems, mainly for the presence of obstacles among the direction of propagation of signals. Application of BLE for the localization of medical equipment could help to save time during an emergency. With this preliminary study, using Beacon devices like tag, three mathematical average methods for reducing variability in indoor localization techniques are performed. Although mathematic average methods can reduce variability, it is very difficult to eliminate the calculation error of the tag-reader distance. Nevertheless, in this preliminary analysis the mathematical method using the average of RSSI measures present a constant error pattern, along distances, ranged between 0 and 8 m not too big for a room localization method.