WHO Surgical Safety Checklist App

The WHO website lists at least five other published studies demonstrating the life-saving benefits of the checklist. Similar to those seen in the aviation industry, the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist takes complex procedures (surgery) and systematically breaks it down into key tasks. Questions on the checklist are broken down into 3 primary categories: before induction of anesthesia, before skin incision, and before the patient leaves the operating room. The app walks users through any or all of these questions using simply checkmarks and/or voice prompts until the checklist is complete. The app is passcode protected so that individual patient checklists can be stored in the app if desired.

We have reviewed a number of preop evaluation apps here at iMedicalApps including Dr. Joshua Steinberg’s app Preop Eval and PreOpGuide which help in deciding whether or not a patient is “safe” to proceed to the operating room. This new WHO app moves beyond the preop world and into the OR itself.

Evidence-based medicine

The app takes the popular WHO Surgical Safety Checklist and adapts it to mobile devices. The Checklist has been studied in numerous countries and shown to significantly reduce morbidity and mortality associated with surgical procedures by simply adhering to its relatively simple checklist items/questions. The Checklist has been championed by numerous medical societies, popular authors, and patient safety groups.