A newly installed operating theatre at the Elective Orthopaedic Centre (SWLEOC) at Epsom Hospital in south-west London is equipped with the latest integrated digital theatre technology from Bender UK and Merivaara.
SWLEOC is reportedly ranked one of the country’s best facilities of its kind for high quality, efficient, elective orthopaedic services, including inpatient, day-case and outpatient. Performing around 5,200 procedures a year, it is one of both the UK and Europe’s largest orthopaedic centres, and a shoulder surgery specialist centre, with sub-specialities in soft tissue, spine, foot, and ankle procedures. The new theatre adds a sixth facility to the five theatres already in place. A key requirement for the teaching hospital was integrated theatre communication, enabling clinical teams to interact and share video with staff and students in an observation area referred to as ‘the fishbowl’.
At the theatre’s heart is the high-capacity Merivaara OpenOR open architecture management system, which integrates operating theatre devices, data, and image management, for rapid display of surgical imagery. OpenOR is connected with surgical lights, monitors, and cameras within the theatre. Any patient-related media can be stored and managed through the system, including footage and snapshots from surgery.
Bender elaborated: “OpenOR is a scalable solution tailored to fit the requirements of any hospital. It integrates PACS and hospital systems for patient worklists and data integration, and is vendor-neutral, so doesn’t limit the connection of image sources from specific manufacturers. Video is connected via a simple ‘plug and play’ function. The over IP-based audio and video management capability provides flexible video routing between sources and displays, allowing live procedures to be viewed and streamed outside the theatre to any given location.”
Bender UK supplied theatre equipment to SWLEOC including its new CP924 glass touchscreen theatre control panel, 24-inch DICOM compliant Bender PACS with glass fascia membrane keyboard, and two 55-inch 4K in-wall glass fascia viewing panels. Merivaara Q-Flow LED operating lights with a wireless HD camera were chosen, the company says, ‘due to their best-in-class colour-rendering and optimised airflow, with unique dynamic obstacle compensation to deliver optimum illumination to the surgical site’. It added: “The ring-within-a-ring design of the Merivaara lights ensures uninterrupted clean air flow from the canopy – an important requirement for orthopaedic surgery to help minimise infection risk.”
Bender UK says it offers ‘an excellent after-sales capability with full training and familiarisation service’, provided by consultant Steve Coleman, who took the Epsom theatre team through a step-by-step introduction.
Ken Macdonald, Electrical Design engineer at the Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust, which manages Epsom Hospital, said: “We now have a fantastic theatre that I know the client is more than happy with, as are the surgeons and the clinical staff, and us as the Trust’s engineers. The system is probably the most up-to-date and cutting edge, with the ability to record for training purposes, allowing the consultants to talk to ‘the fishbowl’ during operations. It was delivered with confidence for us as the client. Questions that were asked of Bender during the commission received answers that were exemplary.”
