TY - JOUR T1 - The Green Surgical Block 4.0: Automation of the operating theatre's climate conditions through a real-time patient-flow solution JF - Future Healthcare Journal JO - Future Healthc J SP - 46 LP - 49 DO - 10.7861/fhj.2022-0142 VL - 10 IS - 1 AU - Jordi Rovira-Simon AU - Marc Sales-i-Coll AU - Patricia Pozo-Rosich AU - Juan Antonio Hueto-Madrid AU - Raquel Cánovas Paradell AU - Anna Ochoa de Echagüen Aguilar AU - Marta Carbonell-Cobo AU - Rodolfo de Castro AU - Genevieve Shaw Y1 - 2023/03/01 UR - http://www.rcpjournals.org/content/10/1/46.abstract N2 - The energy consumed by surgery units constitutes a staggering part of the overall healthcare carbon footprint. Partly due to the demanding climate conditions necessitated by operating theatres (OTs), energy is also wasted because of poorly managed heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems (HVACs) that consume up to 57% of the total energy used in a hospital. With their goal of optimising OTs' performance and reducing patient waiting lists, heads of surgery units worldwide do not dare to risk cancelling scheduled surgery because of problems with the OT environment conditions (ie temperature, humidity, pressure). Current solutions are monolithic, complex and completely disconnected from healthcare logic, failing to take into account the idiosyncrasy of hospitals. This article presents an innovation that uses real-time patient flow data to automate and optimise the OT's climate conditions. ER -