Hospital uses Formula One tactics to help newborn babies

A hospital in Wales has drafted in the Williams Formula One team to help speed up its procedures for resuscitating newborn babies.

University Hospital of Wales, in Cardiff, has modelled its delivery theatres on F1 pit stops, mapping out work areas on the floor and stripping trolleys down to just the most essential tools.

The hospital called in Williams after it noticed similarities in the teamwork, speed and synchronisation required to attend to a pit stop and to resuscitate a newborn baby. Williams recorded the fastest pit stop time of any team at each of the first four races of the 2016 F1 season.

A standard resuscitation involves four people, said Dr Rachel Hayward, a neonatal care specialist, and focuses on "the ABC: airways, breathing and circulation".

She said that following a consultation with Williams, the hospital introduced three main changes. “The first was to improve our trolley with equipment. We have colour-coded things and we want to make pre-formed inserts for drawers,” she said.

The second was to improve the way that the team navigates space and the third was to refine “team dynamics”.

“Everyone now has an identified role so before we get started they are clear on what they are doing, whether it is airways or cardiac,” she said, adding that they had presented their new working model to other hospitals in Wales.

“It’s too early to say if the new processes have saved any lives, but the feedback we’ve had is that the trolley is much more accessible and organised, and every improvement will benefit us,” she added.

Engineers at Williams practise about 2,000 pit stops a year to try to shave seconds off their time.

“Both scenarios require a team of people to work seamlessly in a time critical and space-limited environment,” said Williams. “In F1, a pit crew can change all four tyres on a car in around two seconds, with a team of nearly 20 people working in unison to successfully service a car.”

Dr Hayward’s team spent a day at Williams’s headquarters in Oxfordshire and said that it was also looking at adopting some of the hand signals used by the engineers and video playbacks of resuscitations to try to improve their response.

The hospital has asked GoPro, the video-camera company, for head cameras so that they can “thoroughly analyse things afterwards” in a debrief.

Williams said it would look at other ways of bringing its expertise into healthcare. "We were delighted to assist," said Claire Williams, the daughter of Sir Frank Williams, founder of the F1 team. "Their work is vitally important and the pressure they work under is difficult to comprehend. If some of the advice we have passed on helps to save a young life, then this would have been an extremely worthy endeavour."

Elsewhere, the Ferrari F1 team has worked with Great Ormond Street Hospital to help bring its pit-stop procedures into the delicate “hand off” of child patients from operating theatres to intensive care wards.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2016