Queensland Health has defended the functionality of the anaesthesia solution it plans to roll out as part of its digital hospital program, despite criticism from a group of senior anaesthetists who say it doesn't have the functionality of the existing system.

Pulse+IT has heard from a number of doctors who have inspected the software, Cerner's anaesthetic solution (SAA), that it only has about 80 per cent of the capability of the existing solution, WinChart, which is known in Queensland as Automated Anaesthetic Record Keeping (AARK).