Tech to track the gauze sponge

Technology will ensure doctors never leave anything inside a patient after surgery.

According to Chron.com, in about 3 000 of the 40 million surgeries performed in the US each year, somebody forgets something inside someone. The majority of forgotten items, about two-thirds, are surgical gauze sponges.

Surgery equipment, especially gauze sponges are being tagged with RFID chips. After each surgery, before closing up any patient, doctors will run a scanner over the patient to ensure that nothing is left inside. A test conducted at Stanford University School of Medicine showed that doctors could accurately pinpoint any forgotten items using this system.

Medstar Health, a non-profit healthcare organisation and Microsoft have announced a partnership. This after Microsoft announced plans to purchase Azyxxi, a healthcare software development house.

Azyxxi deals primarily with patients` clinical information, from EKGs to PET scans. The original developers of Azyxxi, Dr Craig Feied, Dr Mark Smith and Fidrik Iskandar will still support the product.

Forty employees from the Washington Hospital Center will join the Microsoft team to continue the development of this software in the healthcare field.

Singapore National Healthcare Group (NHG) is collaborating with IBM to cover its IT infrastructure needs.

IBM will supply NHG with IT helpdesk services, services for onsite support, IT asset management and server operations and management, according to a company statement. The aim is to improve the level of healthcare administration as well as develop the IT infrastructure within this sector.

The five year collaboration will cover four hospitals, nine polyclinics and three speciality institutes.