Improvement of the ergonomic situation in the integrated operating room for laparoscopic operations

The aim of our work is to reduce the stress and strain for the medical staff and simultaneously to increase the efficiency and safety of an integrated operating room system (SIOS) by an ergonomic redesign of the system. SIOS system is a central control system developed by Siemens Medical Solutions mainly used for laparoscopic operations. This new integrated system has been created to improve the efficiency in operating rooms (ORs). The interactive manner of control of nearly all parameters, like the position of the OR table or the intensity of the light, is the main difference of the integrated OR system SIOS compared with conventional operating rooms. However, considering the postures of the doctors and the nurse, the operating room is still a very uncomfortable place of work. To make an ergonomic approach, many factors like human capabilities, functions, anthropometrics, psychological, and physical ones have been taken into account. We performed an ergonomic analysis and propose a new ergonomic redesign. D 2004 CARS and Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.