We introduce an initiative in promoting smart operating rooms using artificial intelligence (AI) and information analytics technologies. For the purpose of reducing rates of surgical complication and death in hospitals and other medical settings, World Health Organization (WHO) Patient Safety has introduced and has been actively promoting worldwide implementation and usage of its Surgical Safety CheckLists (SSCL)1, 2. SSCL compile essential surgical safety objectives and steps into items to be checked by clinicians at work. There are strong evidences to support that, appropriate use of SSCL and adherence to it would lead to significance in reinforcement of accepted surgical safety practices, and in improvement of communication among operating team members3,4. Nevertheless, further improvement and reliable use of SSCL require its formal integration with the pervasive computing systems in today’s surgery rooms. In helping clinicians to share contextual knowledge with each other and in enabling context-aware and automated reasoning, the roles of ontologies and action theories are important for integration: An ontology would provide a formal specification of concepts related to SSCL, including people, places, medical instruments, operations events, and etc.; An action theory would offer a computerized mechanism to keep track of the change of operative context, thus provide a formal and on-site scrutinization on the appropriateness of application of steps enlisted in SSCL.