iPhone App ‘Safe OR’ Incorporates Research Shown to Reduce Death After Surgery by >40%

A recent landmark article published online in the New England Journal of Medicine has shown that using a simple 19-step safety checklist (the Surgical Safety Checklist) in the operating room can significantly reduce post-operative complications. 

Specifically, death after surgery was reduced by more than 40%.
 
Prompted by this scholarly article, QxMD Software has adapted the Surgical Safety Checklist into the iPhone Medical App ‘Safe OR‘ within a week of the online publication of the results in an effort to facilitate knowledge translation into clinical practice. 

‘Safe OR‘ is designed to help surgeons, anaesthetists, OR nurses and other health care professionals reduce the risk of surgical complications and death.

While the life-saving intervention is simple, remembering the 19-item checklist may be challenging for busy surgical teams. This iPhone App can be implemented immediately with minimal training.
 
Though there are an estimated 234 million operations performed annually worldwide, surgical complications remain common and often preventable. The WHO has developed the ‘Surgical Safety Checklist’ in an effort to help surgical teams confirm that critical safety steps are completed before an operation proceeds.

Reference:

Haynes et al for the Safe Surgery Saves Lives Study Group
A Surgical Safety Checklist to Reduce Morbidity and Mortality in a Global Population
Published before print at www.nejm.org January 14, 2009 (10.1056/NEJMsa0810119)

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/NEJMsa0810119

Learn more about ‘Safe OR’ at http://www.SafeOR.org

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QxMD Software is not affiliated with the World Health Organization (WHO) or the Safe Surgery Save Lives initiative.