Executive Chair of InnoScot Health, Graham Watson offers an insight into the innovation taking place to transform NHS operating theatres for a smarter, more efficient healthcare future.
Smart operating theatre technologies are transforming the way the NHS works, making for more efficient and sustainable approaches which are achieving better patient outcomes and helping to tackle waiting lists. Across NHS Scotland, theatre scheduling breakthroughs are maximising facilities and reducing downtime; environmentally friendly innovations are helping to reduce theatre waste and support ambitious Net Zero targets; while high resolution screens and robotic surgery technologies are supplementing human expertise when it comes to complex, precision-led procedures.
Smart theatre technologies are further ensuring that energy usage is optimised and are laying strong foundations for rolling out a leaner, greener health service for generations to come. The NHS must embrace digital tech across its full estate for a more sustainable, joined up future — but the operating theatre is where that can arguably be best harnessed and exemplified in the here and now for both patient and staff gain.
Only recently, Scotland's First Minister, John Swinney, pledged that "better use of data will ensure that more operating theatres are working at maximum capacity, with best practice approaches shown to increase productivity by 20%, rolled out across the country." Aligned with that ambition, we have seen a surge of exciting breakthroughs taking place, in recent times, across NHS Scotland, many of them spearheaded by the workforce's forward-thinkers.
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