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“Greening” Healthcare
Prevent the Vent
Improving vented air quality in hospital operating rooms
by James Sbrolla
HC MayJun08
Although it comes as a surprise to many, hospital operating roomsare a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. The anesthetics inhaled by patients in surgery rooms around the world contain volatile halogenated ethers that are both an urban clean air issue and a serious contributor to global warming.
The fact is, inhaled anesthetics are volatile liquids. They are vaporized with oxygen and medical air and/or nitrous oxide before being delivered in diluted mixtures to the patient. This mixture of medical gases and anesthetics is administered to patients in order to induce and maintain anesthesia unconsciousness during surgery. Ultimately, less than five percent of the delivered inhalation anesthetic is actually metabolized by the patient. The balance (over 95 percent) of the anesthetic gas mixture is routed through the operating room’s scavenging system and into the atmosphere, to the detriment of the environment and the general public.
The three volatile anesthetics commonly used worldwide are Isofl urane, Sevofl urane and Desfl urane. Each has a significant global warming impact. For example, the global warming impact for Desfl urane is 3,700 times stronger than that for carbon dioxide (CO2). They are also toxic – potentially lethal when inhaled in excessive concentrations.
An Ontario-based company has discovered a solution and is working together with Ontario anesthesiologists to implement the system. Blue-Zone Technologies can potentially capture all vented volatile anesthetics before they are emitted into the atmosphere. The company has developed a patented system called “Deltasorb,” which selectively captures the unused anesthetic prior to having it exhausted to the environment.
The Deltasorb unit houses a specially developed material “Deltazite,” which is a complex matrix that acts like a lobster trap for the volatile gases and, provided its standard use in the operating room, may altogether eliminate this class of greenhouse gas pollution.
The units are changed out twice weekly and the gases are recovered through a sophisticated desorption unit at Blue-Zone’s facility in Concord, Ontario. The average hospital can immediately reduce hundreds of tons of greenhouse gases per year – the equivalent of hundreds of cars. The system is currently installed in 150 operating rooms in 15 university and regional hospitals across Ontario. It is now available to all hospitals for a monthly service fee.
According to Dr. Stephen Brown, chair of the Ontario Medical Association Section of Anesthesiologists and chief of anesthesia at North York General, “We are in the midst of a ‘green revolution’ and we want to do our part in the operating room. When we realized the problem was as big as it is, we decided it was time to act. We had read about car companies, energy producers and even supermarkets trying to out-green each other. I don’t see this as green smoke.
By using this new and effi cient technology, we can reduce the environmental impact of our profession and do our part in helping the planet.” The co-inventor of the technology
and president of Blue-Zone, Dusanka Filipovic, explains where the solution was developed: “The company’s origins are actually quite interesting. First developed at Union Carbide Canada Corporation, now known as Praxair Canada, the operating expertise in selectively capturing
these anesthetic gases was contributed by the Department of Anesthesia, University of Toronto, with initial trials of the technology conducted at Toronto General Hospital under the supervision of Dr. Arthur Scott, former chair, Department of Anesthesia, UOT.”
The company has received many awards, including the Canadian Innovation Award for Environmental Technologies (2005) and the performance claim Environmental Technology Verification (2006). In addition, Sustainable Development Technologies Canada (SDTC), a federal funding agency for clean technologies, has been supporting this greenhouse gas emission reduction initiative by granting Blue-Zone Technologies a financial contribution of nearly $3 million over the past three years.
“We have been using Blue-Zone’s technology in the operating theatres at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto for almost fi ve years,” says staff anesthesiologist Dr. Daniel Riegert. “Our specialty needs to consider reducing the wastage and pollution of our clinical
activities whenever feasible. We think it is the right thing to do.”
Blue-Zone Technologies Ltd.
Lexmark adds an extra set of hands to nursing stations with new Clinical Assistant
The Lexmark Clinical Assistant is a solutions platform that includes all the functions of a Lexmark X646dte monochrome laser multifunction product (MFP) plus embedded applications to simplify health care workfl ow processes. The unique capabilities of the Clinical Assistant are easily accessed via four user-friendly icons on its intuitive eTask touchscreen interface. These icons allow clinical staff to complete complicated, time-consuming processes with a single touch, increasing productivity and giving them back valuable time to focus on quality
patient care. Lexmark’s Embedded Solutions Framework (eSF) allows these Java-based applications to run directly on the Clinical Assistant, saving customers the expense of additional servers.
“The Clinical Assistant delivers Lexmark’s proven solutions for the health care industry in a unique way to help nursing and clinical staff spend less time with paper and more time with patients,” said Marty Canning, Lexmark vice president and president of its Printing Solutions and Services Division.
The Lexmark Clinical Assistant prints at speeds up to 50 pages per minute and also includes copy, scan and fax capabilities. The four workfl ow solutions featured on the Clinical Assistant include:
Scan to EMR
EMR (electronic medical records) systems help reduce errors because patient
information is stored electronically, allowing physicians to quickly access critical information. The Clinical Assistant can integrate directly with leading EMR solutions, or the Scan to EMR icon can be used to securely scan and route documents to pre-determined network destinations.
Physician order routing
The Clinical Assistant includes an integrated orders routing solution that allows Lexmark adds an extra set of hands to nursing stations with new Clinical Assistant nursing staff and clinicians to securely route physician orders and automatically separate STAT, or urgent, and normal orders with the touch of an icon. The Clinical Assistant also integrates with leading medication order management systems and works with Lexmark’s Queue & View order management solution, an optional server-based application that allows pharmacists to view and manage orders online.
Card copying
Patient insurance or identifi cation cards are copied frequently and included with patient files. However, because the cards are typically two-sided, medical staff must go through an extra step and make two separate photocopies – one of both the front and the back of the card. Lexmark’s solution allows staff to scan each side of the card and print both sides in an enlarged format on one side of a single sheet of paper. The function is easily accessed with one touch of an icon on the eTask interface on the Clinical Assistant, saving time, as well as paper, and making a frequently used process much more effi cient.
Forms on demand
Many health care facilities are moving away from expensive pre-printed forms and storing frequently accessed documents online for printing on demand. However, clinical staff do not have time to perform the extra steps required to log in to a workstation, locate the document
via Web browser and submit a print job. Lexmark’s solution allows clinical staff to quickly and easily access those forms with the touch of an icon through the eTask interface on the Clinical Assistant, making it easy to choose and then print selected documents.
Lexmark International, Inc.
