Postoperative data collection automation

**1. Purpose**

1. Automate postoperative data collection from patient records, EHRs, and monitoring devices to streamline anesthesiology reporting, minimize manual entry, ensure accurate outcomes tracking, and trigger follow-up workflows for patient safety and compliance.

2. Guarantee regulatory and billing compliance by capturing precise, time-stamped, and standardized postoperative data for analytics, auditing, and longitudinal patient management.

3. Support multidisciplinary collaboration by distributing collected data to relevant care teams, researchers, and administrative staff.

**2. Trigger Conditions**

1. Completion of a surgical case or anesthesia procedure with discharge from PACU.

2. Update to the patient’s EHR chart indicating “postop phase initiated” or “ready for postoperative evaluation.”

3. Arrival of new monitoring device/EMR data flagged with postoperative context.

4. Scheduled times post-surgery (e.g., 1 hour, 6 hours, 24 hours).

5. Submission of a postoperative anesthesia note by clinical staff.

6. Detection of newly uploaded patient files, forms, or checklists related to patient recovery.

**3. Platform Variants**

1. Epic EHR

• Feature/Setting: Webhooks on chart updates; post-procedure note API
  
• Sample: Configure outbound webhook for "Anesthesia Procedure Complete" event.
  

2. Cerner Millennium

• Feature/Setting: FHIR API – Observation or Encounter resource for postoperative status
  
• Sample: Poll Observation endpoint for new postop status with relevant codes.
  

3. Meditech Expanse

• Feature/Setting: Report Scheduler; HL7 message export
  
• Sample: Set up automatic report generation post-surgery event.
  

4. Allscripts

• Feature/Setting: Clinical Summary API (getPostProcedureSummaries)
  
• Sample: Use scheduled queries after case closure in system.
  

5. athenahealth

• Feature/Setting: Encounter API – finalized procedure note retrieval
  
• Sample: Trigger workflow on new finalized encounter notes.
  

6. Philips IntelliVue

• Feature/Setting: Data Export API for device telemetry
  
• Sample: Push Vitals/SpO2/monitor data to downstream receiver after case status changes.
  

7. GE Healthcare CARESCAPE

• Feature/Setting: RESTful Device Data Interface (DDI)
  
• Sample: Auto-forward postoperative monitoring session at patient transfer.
  

8. Salesforce Health Cloud

• Feature/Setting: Health Timeline; Process Builder triggers
  
• Sample: Rule starts upon patient record update with postop tag.
  

9. Redox Engine

• Feature/Setting: Data normalization and webhook relays
  
• Sample: Configure listener for "Procedure Completed" HL7 message.
  

10. InterSystems HealthShare

• Feature/Setting: Notification subscriptions; FHIR REST API
  
• Sample: Setup FHIR subscription to "Condition: postoperative" resource.
  

11. Smartsheet

• Feature/Setting: Automated workflows on form submission
  
• Sample: Form auto-populates row and notifies stakeholder group.
  

12. Google Sheets

• Feature/Setting: App Script with onEdit/onChange triggers
  
• Sample: Script triggers upon new row insertion of postop data.
  

13. Zapier

• Feature/Setting: Multi-step workflows (Zaps) for EHR API polling
  
• Sample: Scheduled task checks for new postop records and routes to downstream systems.
  

14. Make (Integromat)

• Feature/Setting: HTTP module to interact with hospital APIs
  
• Sample: Webhook listens for data dump and processes into standardized format.
  

15. Microsoft Power Automate

• Feature/Setting: Connectors for EHRs, Outlook, Teams
  
• Sample: Trigger on SharePoint file arrival tagged as postop.
  

16. ServiceNow

• Feature/Setting: Health IT workflow automation; Subscription to case event
  
• Sample: Incident opens when new postoperative event logs in EMR.
  

17. AWS Lambda

• Feature/Setting: Event-driven serverless compute for data parsing and forwarding
  
• Sample: Executes on S3 bucket PUT event for postop files.
  

18. Azure Logic Apps

• Feature/Setting: FHIR API polling; Healthcare Bot connection
  
• Sample: Logic app polls EHR FHIR endpoint for postop tokens.
  

19. Google Cloud Functions

• Feature/Setting: Cloud Pub/Sub notification event for medical data
  
• Sample: Triggers on new document upload into postoperative dataset.
  

20. DocuSign

• Feature/Setting: Envelope Completed webhook; API for file download
  
• Sample: Moves submitted postop forms to secure storage once signed.
  

**4. Benefits**

1. Significantly reduces manual data entry errors and administrative workload.

2. Ensures rapid, consistent availability of postoperative data for clinical decisions and analytics.

3. Improves compliance with legal, accreditation, and billing requirements.

4. Enables timely alerts for patient follow-up and risk detection.

5. Facilitates seamless data sharing and team coordination across healthcare disciplines.

6. Scalable for large health systems and customizable to specific specialty or reporting needs.