Consider the untapped potential of your operating theatre as ‘white space’; a concept that encompasses all the opportunities to be more effective and efficient with your existing resources. How can you access these opportunities? How can you transform your theatre ‘white space’ into actionable insights that can provide measurable improvements in cost savings and surgical outcomes?

The answer: with Proximie.

Proximie turns your theatre ‘white space’ into rich data that can be visualised and acted upon to generate solutions and drive improvements. By capturing ambient video and audio of the theatre, Proximie provides a comprehensive record of every movement and interaction during an operating day - a single, transparent overview that can be used to paint the truest and most objective view of an operating theatre’s performance. A tapestry of data that can be used to highlight anything from theatre utilisation, downtime and turnaround times, instrument table setup, while gaining detailed insight into what is happening within every corner of the theatre.

Connecting all of this data together makes it possible to identify and understand the variables that impact theatre efficiency and patient outcomes, and analyse the complex interactions that underpin procedures so that we can determine where they go right and wrong, and how they can be optimised. This theatre performance data can then be compared at scale across a variety of procedures, surgeons, regions and healthcare settings to build up a comprehensive understanding of what constitutes best practice.

“Proximie turns your theatre ‘white space’ into rich data that can be visualised and acted upon to generate solutions and drive improvements.”

No areas of grey

By recording every surgery, Proximie can paint the truest, 360 degree view of Operating Room Efficiency (ORE). With Proximie, there are no shades of grey. A dataset that can ultimately help teams achieve Operational Excellence by seeing in crystal clear detail the opportunities for improvement; before, during and after surgery. For every stakeholder. In any given healthcare setting.

Analysis of the key process metrics and trends within any given theatre become the blueprint to a constant cycle of improved ORE. Not just in a single theatre’s traditional workflow but a process that ultimately can be applied to any other clinical setting. By using Proximie, teams have seamless access to a detailed operational view - and an opportunity to compare baseline to current state, and therefore pinpoint opportunities for further efficiency.

“By recording every surgery, Proximie can paint the truest, 360 degree view of Operating Room Efficiency (ORE). With Proximie, there are no shades of grey.”

Where there is idle time, there’s opportunity

The rich data collected by Proximie can help our customers establish powerful insights that can help to further surgical performance and training, but beyond the obvious benefits of being able to optimise best practice, what other actionable insights might be returned from a hospital theatre?

Below we will take a look at a few examples of some of the data that Proximie is capturing from theatres around the world, that can be collected, visualised and analysed to help identify “white space” and how this space can be utilised as an opportunity for continuous improvement.

Using Proximie, we can provide our customers with a holistic view of every event and process that takes place in any given theatre during an operative day. The more you record, the more data you have to reveal the white space of your theatre. The bigger the white space, the bigger the opportunity to make efficiency gains.

An objective view of anaesthesia time. Wheels in. Clean start time to clean end time. First incision. Time between the first patient exiting the OR to the next patient entering the anaesthesia room. Every last detail is captured in crystal clear detail, which can help to illustrate the range of variability in daily performance. The touchtime, turnover, inactive turnover and procedure length become not just numbers but pivotal indicators that can help inform strategic decisions moving forwards.

To give an example, in one recent case Proximie helped to showcase how and why 53% of a theatre’s turnover time was inactive - this data-driven insight enabled our customer to take more proactive interventions the second time around to ultimately optimise that white space with efficiency gains.

In another - and through recording, tagging and labelling procedures performed in a large UK hospital - Proximie could identify that a third of total procedure time had no surgery taking place in it, 83% of the turnover time was inactive, and there was a 21 minute range between the fastest and slowest pre-prep time. These important components of the theatre workflow highlight where and how improvements can be made to ultimately address overall theatre efficiency.

At Proximie, it is never about data in isolation. Proximie’s approach is built around our capacity to provide further, more detailed statistical analysis that can help to translate these metrics into potential theatre improvements.

“At Proximie, it is never about data in isolation. Proximie’s approach is built around our capacity to provide further, more detailed statistical analysis that can help to translate these metrics into potential theatre improvements.” 

An objective view of the room

Proximie’s data can seamlessly show a theatre’s existing operational landscape, which can ultimately become the bedrock of a problem-solving framework. Put simply, by distinguishing between ‘productive’ time and ‘non-productive’ time in an operating theatre, the latter referring to those periods without true clinical activities or marked by long delays between steps, we can help to make tangible improvements in a theatre’s performance. The areas of improvement - the white space - can ultimately help teams to foster a culture of improvement, problem solving and innovation.

Proximie can help healthcare teams find consistency within a theatre; by providing teams with an objective view of their standardised processes and areas which could lead to unpredictability in procedure times.

By highlighting variability in processes we can present opportunities for maximising efficiency. What happened during a particular operative day, was there a deviation in efficiency that can be addressed and fixed? The data garnered from Proximie’s platform enables customers to hone in on whether there are specific events preventing more standardised performance.

Taking turnover time as an example. If an institution has a room turnover target of 20 minutes and data shows that 80% of room cleanings are completed in 18 minutes, that would indicate excellent performance. However, outliers - instances taking significantly longer - pose issues. These anomalies can stem from factors like communication breakdowns or staffing issues, and they impact procedure predictability and scheduling.

Taking another example, if a room cleaning unexpectedly takes 60 minutes instead of the planned 20, it causes a 40-minute delay, disrupting the entire day's schedule. This unpredictability necessitates either extending the workday or intensifying efforts, which is unsustainable, costly, and can reduce staff satisfaction and can ultimately impact patient safety. All instances represent opportunities for exploration and efficiency gains.

The goal of Proximie’s Analytics Vision is to support institutions focused on growth, staff retention, or reducing labour costs. By identifying ‘white spaces’ of time and cost savings, we can empower healthcare teams, institutions and healthcare systems with the information they need to make informed recommendations to improve efficiency and generate more revenue.

Interested to learn more? Request a demo, here.