{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.031704587840358074, 'fraction_numerical': 0.004102946661693398, 'mean_word_length': 5.0, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Updating software? How you can overcome islands of automation.

2004 OR Manager Salary/Career survey. But a large number of systems are older products that do not offer the range of functions most perioperative managers want and need. “ORs are looking at new systems because their current systems are not robust enough,” says Judith Swanson, RN, BS, director of perioperative services at 715bed Texas Children’s Hospital, Houston, who spoke at the Managing Today’s OR Suite conference in the fall in Chicago. Traditionally, ORs have been islands of automation, with systems that worked well but didn’t connect well to the mainland. They might have had bridges to other departments like admissions, finance, and materials management. Sometimes those bridges were solid, and sometimes they were rickety. Now ORs are looking to turn those bridges into super highways. They want access to real-time data and seamless integration with other information systems. OR managers want preference cards linked to the charging and materials management systems. They want staff in the OR and postanesthesia care to have immediate access to the patient’s record with lab results and medication history. They want to be linked with physicians’ offices to better coordinate scheduling. And they want easy-to-create reports for improving processes and managing costs. Boundaries blurred For some, the choice of a new system is already made. They will use the OR module from a company that serves the rest of the institution, such as Cerner, McKesson, Meditech, or GE Healthcare. Managers looking at the whole market have more choices, including Surgical Information Systems (SIS), Picis, Per-Se Technologies, Unibased Systems Archi-tecture (USA), and Mediware. The choice used to be fairly clear-cut. Would you choose a “niche” product specifically designed for surgery? Or would you choose a product that was part of a package serving multiple departments? Now boundaries are more blurred. The trend is toward greater integration. Most of the niche vendors either have disappeared or been acquired by larger companies, as iPath was by GE Health-care in 2002. At the same time, companies that still focus on surgery, such as SIS and Picis, have expanded to include more of the perioperative continuum and even beyond. Picis, which recently merged with ibex, an emergency department system, and offers critical care software, calls itself a “best-in-cluster” company. Both SIS and Picis have partnerships with larger health information companies, SIS with Eclipsys and Picis with IDX. Still others, namely Per-Se and USA, link their perioperative software to their enterprisewide scheduling software.