Hospital in Toronto and a professor of surgery at the University of
Toronto. "We provide very deep insights to those."
The system lets surgical facilities be proactive rather than reactive,
leveraging data to prevent future mishaps and difficulties. "The cur-
rent model is that you wait for somebody to suffer a complication in
order to analyze what happened and make improvements," says Dr.
Grantcharov. "We want to identify deviations from the perfect course
of an operation, especially if there's a pattern. We want to replace ini-
tiatives based on tradition, emotions or gut feeling, and make data-dri-
ven decisions."
Twelve facilities in the U.S., Canada and Western Europe currently
use the OR Black Box, with three more coming online soon. Dr.
Grantcharov expects close to 30 institutions to be on board by year's
end. Rollout has been careful and deliberate.
Dr. Grantcharov has even turned down interested facilities he felt
weren't culturally prepared. "We're focused on creating a network of
institutions that share the same vision to make surgery safer, and to
make the operating room safer, more efficient and a better working
environment," he says. "Unlike professionals in sports, oil, aviation or
the nuclear industry, we in health care, especially in the OR, are not
used to this level of transparency. We had to convince healthcare
providers that this is something that is confidential and non-punitive
and makes all of us better, something that makes our ORs safer and
more efficient."
Dr. Grantcharov is looking to partner with surgical facilities that are
committed to improving quality and safety in a confidential and non-
punitive fashion as opposed to facilities where every failure has to be
associated with blame and shame or identifying individuals rather
than system issues.
As such, the black box data analysis focuses on system factors like
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