Interactive Surgical Depiction for the Electronic Medical Record

With the transition to electronic medical record (EMR) technology, traditional paper charts are seldom used and less accessible to clinicians. In the past, written documentation of an operation was frequently supplemented by a surgeon’s sketch. This thesis explores the design of a digital interactive tool to enable surgeons to quickly and accurately document the patient’s post-procedural anatomy in an image. This tool is unique in that it presets a preexisting 3D model, which the user may split, remove, and reconnect to represent changes to the patient’s gastrointestinal (GI) tract. Through an intuitive interface, the surgeon will manipulate a 3D model of normal GI anatomy to depict resections and reconnections of bowel at appropriate distances and configurations and include elements such as drains, measurements, and annotations. The surgeon can then save the image with the postoperative note to follow the patient. As a part of the EMR, the image is available for viewing by practitioners responsible for post-operative care and subsequent diagnoses and procedures, contributing to overall patient safety.