ANN ARBOR, MI – St. Joseph Mercy Hospital, a 529-bed teaching hospital, will install the OR-Dashboard system from Cambridge, Mass-based LiveData into 17 operating rooms in order to improve patient safety and clinical workflow, say hospital executives.

“The LiveData system maximizes accurate communication. It minimizes the need for verbal communication, which is distracting during a procedure,” said Walter M. Whitehouse, Jr., MD, chairman of the department of surgery and medical director of surgical services at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital.

Whitehouse emphasized that the bottom line was improved patient safety. “LiveData is uniquely positioned to bring this technology to the table with its extensive experience in the power industry,” he said.

Phil Brzezinski, vice president of Healthcare Systems at LiveData, said that LiveData’s visual integration system captures, synthesizes and displays patient information in the OR through a flat panel display, which can also be accessed on the web from anywhere in the hospital.

“There exists this great information [in hospitals], yet it is trapped in systems, and we bring it out and make it usable,” said Brzezinski.

Brzezinski said that he is very excited about LiveData’s implementation at SJM because the hospital has, “moved into a tier where the true need lies.” He added that SJM has the same needs as bigger hospitals, such as Massachusetts General and NewYork Presbyterian, but may have fewer resources to make it available.

Brzezinski insists that LiveData can integrate all of SJM’s information into one location to make it more usable.

The hospital’s implementation training plan will begin with a 30-hour orientation for clinicians a week before implementation. This session focuses on the benefits of having the dashboard in the OR. The morning of go-live SJM will offer a 45-minute orientation familiarizing the OR staff with the dashboard’s features.

LiveData will also provide a team that will “hang out” in the OR for about a week to offer one-on-one instructions to the staff. LiveData hopes to have the system up and running by the end of 2007.

LiveData’s OR-dashboard costs approximately $25,000 per operating room, but integration costs vary depending on the hospital, said Brzezinski.

St. Joseph Mercy Hospital, and the St. Joseph Mercy Health System generally, are currently building an overarching IT system with Cerner that will be up in about 24 months, according to Whitehouse.