Australian medical software developer Medical Systems Design (MSD) has inked its biggest deal to date to provide software and services to seven hospitals and 30 operating theatres managed by the Brisbane Mater Hospital.

Mater Hospital"s executive director Don Murray said MSD"s SurgiDat application tracks instruments from the sterilization unit to the theatre.

"It is important for us to know that the sterile cycle has been effective; we wanted automatic track and trace down to the individual instrument and we wanted to do it before it was mandated to us," he said.

MSD has just ported SurgiDat to Intersystems" Cache post-relational database.

MSD founder Todd Kemp said evaluations of Cache demonstrated superior application development speed compared to its rivals.

He said Cache also had lower hardware costs compared to other databases and was inexpensive to maintain.

Because SurgiDat works as both an enterprise data collection tool and business intelligence tool, Kemp said it can quickly generate enormous quantities of live data.

"We can record a patient"s position during a procedure, whether or not a warming blanket was used, the nurse present and even the rebate codes for insurance purposes and we can track consumption of items to integrate with the supply chain to automate the ordering of supplies," Kemp said. "With Cache we know we can go to 32 terabytes.

"Another key benefit is Cache"s built in HL7 messaging compliance, a fundamental healthcare facility requirement."

SurgiDat produces an audit trail when an item is taken out of a hospital"s sterilization unit in order to validate duty of care. The software works via a 2D data barcode laser bonded to porcelain on each piece of equipment.