Terminology, communication, and information systems in nonoperating room anaesthesia in the COVID-19 era

Nonoperating room anaesthesia (NORA) is a rapidly growing and important area of anaesthesia care. We would contend that anaesthesia informatics principles and innovations that have been widely applied in numerous diverse domains could be successfully applied in NORA environments, resulting in significant improvements in anaesthesia care delivery.

We highlight key recent studies from the perioperative and informatics literature, placing each in the context of how it has, or how it may conceivably be applied to, improved NORA care.

There is significant opportunity for anaesthesiologists and clinical informaticians to collaborate and apply major advances in the perioperative informatics field to NORA environments, particularly given rapid recent changes in the field during the COVID-19 epidemic. Given the complexity of NORA patients and care delivered in NORA environments, applied clinical informatics has the potential to drastically improve care delivered.