Florida Anesthesia Computer and Engineering Team
©
University of Florida, 1996
The driving forces for medical records technology and the anesthesiologist are likely to be economic, as the anesthesiologist tends to view the hospital as the person who should foot the bill for such technology. Even given this, there are likely to be several dramatic developments in medical records technology:
* Automated access to critical patient information
As the desire to become more efficient in the handling of patients increases, automated systems which can make interconnections to distant hospitals and find critical information will become economically justified to reduce anesthesia manpower in preoperative delays.
Combined with this, the malpractice industry will drive the development of systems that will maintain records of patients with significant medical problems, and anesthesiologists will work with computers that automatically announce warnings about their patients drawn from distant databases.
* Improved time utilization intraoperatively
Anesthesiologists will likely become the defactor business managers of operating rooms, because they have their hands free during the surgery and have the necessary electronic access to view, analyze, and manage the case scheduling and throughput of a modern operating department. This development will be driven by the twin desires of hospitals to decrease OR staffing requirements, and of anesthesiologists to supplement their dwindling revenues: they will take on the jobs previously done by nursing management.
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