EVALUATION OF AN OPERATING THEATER DESIGN BY A SOFTWARE PROGRAM (OTDA: OPERATING THEATER DESIGN ANALYZER)

The design and establishment of the operating theatre (OT) is not a simple architecture engineering work.This project needs a specialized planning and execution effort from all engineering specialists driven andcoordinated by the needs, preferences and safety of the medical/surgical team. More than one reference inoperating theatre design is available, but each reference is dedicated for the design of a special part of theproject. This paper presents a complete comprehensive integrated paperless database application programcalled Operating Theatre Design Analyzer (OTDA). This application is used to ensure the OT designcompliance with seven international standards and three accreditation programs integrated with eachother. It helps the owners of healthcare facilities or those who are interested in this area to identify andsolve the problems in the OT design. The program was introduced to some hospitals in different Arabcountries for evaluation; the percentage of compliance with standard for each item in OTDA was recorded.The analysis of the results reflects a lack of infection control awareness and misunderstanding of the roleof the clinical engineer in OT design and healthcare facilities design as whole.