The black box used by airlines is an important device in determining what caused something to go wrong, now a Toronto surgeon wants to use similar technology in the operating room.

Dr. Teodor Grantcharov, a surgeon at St. Michael’s Hospital, and a professor at the University of Toronto, says what inspired him is the way the airline industry is willing to acknowledge human error and to reconstruct accidents in order to learn from them.

He’s been working on the technology for a couple of years, including consultations with Air Canada for abut six months,

His surgery black box collects data by using cameras, microphones, and patient-monitoring devices.

Dr. Grantcharov says preliminary data from a  test project in April shows that a minor inconvenience in an operating room can end up making an enormous difference.