Visualizing patient trajectories on wall-mounted boards — information security challenges

Since operating room departments are among the costliest resources at a hospital, much attention is devoted to maximize their utilization. Operating room activities are however notoriously hard to plan in advance. This has to do with the unpredictable, problem-solving nature of the work and that the work is carried out by a multidisciplinary team of health personnel, members of which also have commitments outside the operating room department. We assume that operating room teams have the capacity to coordinate themselves and that coordination might be facilitated by visualizing relevant information on wall-mounted boards. To characterize clinical situations that require coordination and re-planning of the teams’ work, we have developed a realistic scenario. We analyse and discuss the information security challenges that follow from displaying information on the whereabouts of other teams, actors and patients on wall-mounted boards in the operating rooms. Information security threats could be mitigated by de-identification techniques. Information demands could thereby be met without sacrificing the privacy of those whose information is displayed.