Pushing boundaries of video review in trauma: using comprehensive data to improve the safety of trauma care

Adverse events and lapses in safety are identified after the fact and often discussed through postevent review. These rounds rely on personal recollection, information from patient charts and incident reports that are limited by retrospective data collection. This results in recall bias and inaccurate or insufficient detail related to timeline, incidence and nature adverse events. To better understand the interplay of the complex team and task-based challenges in the trauma bay, we have developed a synchronized data capture and analysis platform called the Trauma Black Box (Surgical Safety Technologies, Toronto). This system continuously acquires audiovisual, patient physiological and environmental data from a sophisticated array of wall-mounted cameras, microphones and sensors. Expert analysts and software-based algorithms then populate a data timeline of case events from start to finish, retaining a handful of anonymized video clippings to supplement the review. These data also provide a consistent and reliable method to track specific quality metrics, such as time to trauma team assembly or time to blood product arrival. Furthermore, data can also be linked to patients’ electronic medical records to explore relationships between initial trauma resuscitation and downstream patient-oriented outcomes. A video capture and data analysis system for the trauma bay overcomes the inherent deficiencies in the current standard for evaluating patient care in the trauma bay and offers exciting potential to enhance patient safety through a comprehensive data collection system.