Vanderbilt Perioperative Information Management System (VPIMS)

Bill Crounse over at the Microsoft’s HealthBlog is reporting about perioperative information management system, implemented by Vanderbilt’s Dept. of Anesthesia:

… here’s what I gleaned from a keynote presentation made by Dr. Paul St. Jacques earlier this week at the MSHUG Tech Forum 2007 in Redmond.
Vanderbilt’s perioperative information management system, VPIMS, serves as “master control” for the medical center’s 60 operating rooms in 6 suites, handling thousands of surgical cases each year. You may be surprised to learn that less than 5 percent of all surgeries in America are fully managed and documented electronically. That’s right. In the year 2007, 95 percent of the “life and death” work-flow processes in surgery are still done on paper.
So what’s to be gained by going electronic? How about a 100 percent improvement in on-time cases starts, or a 90 percent compliance with perioperative antibiotic protocols resulting in an 1 percent decrease in surgical wound infections. How about a 67 percent reduction in chart errors. How about the average time to produce a billable chart moving from 12 days to 1, with a $1 Million plus improvement in formerly lost revenues. Or how about a 10 percent yearly increase in case volume without adding capacity, keeping in mind that every additional case per day generates more than $1 Million in revenue per year.
VPIMS handles everything from surgery scheduling, to perioperative documentation, to billing. In addition, a module called Vigilance provides real-time monitoring of every operating room in the facility with multi-view streaming video, patient vital signs, alerts and reminders. It might look like something out of Star Wars, but what it does for patient safety and staff satisfaction is priceless. And did I mention there’s a whole lot of Microsoft technology under the covers?

For your correspondent, an anesthesiologist, it looks like we’re being quickly assimilated into the Borg. Resistance is futile, but the future is bright.
HealthBlog post …
Video of the system from CBS Evening News (Windows Media format)…
Product page…