August 11, 2005

Aspiring to create a patient zone of safety within the operating room, LiveData, Inc. received a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from The United States Army Medical Research and Materiel Command. The LiveData team will be working with the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and CIMIT Operating Room of the Future (ORF).

This grant follows the Phase I SBIR grant issued in December 2003, in which LiveData, working with CIMIT and MGH clinicians, paved the way for significant improvements in patient safety through an integrated information system in the OR. The Phase II grant will enable LiveData to design a state of the art system ― LiveData Patient Knowledge System (PKS) ― for the MGH/CIMIT Operating Room of the Future.

"This is the first example of cross-system data integration that the ORF patient zone of safety needs in order to fulfill our vision ― enhancing patient safety while at the same time giving OR personnel the tools they need to focus more intensely on direct patient care," noted Warren Sandberg, M.D., PhD, Co-Program Leader of the MGH / CIMIT ORF.

Principal Investigator on the project, Dr. Sandberg added: "Safety depends on having complete, integrated patient data. Although data integration from disparate sources is something that clinicians do all of the time, the time scale in the OR can be very compressed. Therefore, integrating big parts of the continuous data stream and making it visible on a single display for everyone to see and use is a holy grail of the OR of the Future. Once the data are collected in a single place, it enhances decision support and information clarity, and we believe the patient will benefit."