“Facilities have enough instrumentation; we provide a better/faster way of processing that instrumentation with the goal of lower surgical delays and increased cost savings”
Scott Cohen’s immense experiences as a direct device representative, owner of multiple medical device distributorships, and playing consultative roles for Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) allowed him to view the medical device industry from all aspects. “This unique perspective helped me form a multi-level view spanning from facility SPD/OR challenges, to OEM Supply Chain constraints,” says Scott, Founder/CEO at Innovative Sterilization Technologies (IST). “I was able to evaluate sterile processing and workflow differently and from all sides, utilizing creativity to change the paradigm of the sterile processing complete cycle.” Creativity and confidence provided the foundation to attempt the creation of IST and the ONE TRAY™ technologies.
According to Scott, although surgical instruments and implants are becoming more complex; sterile processing departments are having to process a higher volume of trays but have the same or fewer resources to maintain quality. One of the main reasons is that OEMs have been increasing set size and complexity for years. “The trend in population age lends itself to increased numbers of surgeries performed., Surgical case volumes within some surgery segments, such as total knee and hip replacements, are becoming more benign, with significantly better outcomes.,” explains Scott. “As cost constraints begin to tighten, OEMs will be forced to simplify sets for internal and facility cost savings.” The clearance for outpatient reimbursement of total joint replacements will increase that pricing pressure as these procedures begin to move to the outpatient setting.
The Unique Technology – ONE TRAY™
The ground-breaking technology, ONE TRAY™, offers the unique ability to not only increase efficiencies in OR/SPD departments. ONE TRAY™ is the only packaging system on the market FDA 510(k) cleared for no dry time and storage. The elimination of dry time decreases the total sterilization cycle time by 80+ percent, while still achieving industry-standard sterilization levels, and providing a proven, efficient, high-quality sterilization option for sets/assets that require high turnover. These efficiencies and the ability for fast turnover provide direct cost savings to facilities as well as lower levels of hospital-owned asset requirements.
As an example,, Dr. Robert Marchand contacted IST with a challenge. He utilized the Stryker Mako Total Knee Replacement system but was hampered by sterile processing limits and OEM Supply Chain constraints that limited his daily surgical case level to a maximum of 4. “Our IST Team worked with Dr. Marchand and his facility to verify the sterilization of his sets in less ONE TRAY™ containers, utilizing a proprietary organizational system from K1Medical, EZ-TRAX™ to reconfigure the OEM and hospital-owned assets associated with his TKA,” says Scott. Following implementation, Dr. Marchand, his facility, and the OEM doubled the daily output of surgical cases to 8 per day without adding any additional facility resources.
It is pertinent to mention that multiple patents protect ONE TRAY™ from competitive infringement and ensure that IST continues to provide unique technology to the market for years to come.. All competitive sterilization containers and sterile wraps require a significant dry time that translates to an average of 2.5-hours total sterilization cycle time versus ONE TRAY™’s total sterilization cycle time of about 20 minutes. This time savings provides substantial efficiency gains and cost savings.
For the days to come, the most exciting project IST is launching is the ONE TRAY™/EZ-TRAX™ Universal Total Joint Sets that will change the market yet again. These sets can easily reconfigure OEM total knee and total hip sets to IST’s Universal Configuration of just 3 trays with just 3 levels of instrumentation while maintaining AORN weight recommendations. This provides hospitals tremendous efficiency, increased throughput, and significant cost savings. With the industry move of Total Joints to Outpatient Surgery Centres, this technology is the only way these ASC’s can process the increased workload with their small sterile processing departments. These sets will eliminate sterile wrap delays, provide time savings during case set up and tear down, and increase the speed and efficiency of cleaning and decontamination.
IST continues to evaluate the market and create efficient and specialized sets for the Eye industry, Rigid Arthroscope market and focused specialized hospital and OEM set configurations. These specialized sets will continue to provide speed, quality, and cost savings to facilities. “Our motto is ‘Facilities have enough instrumentation, we provide a better/faster way of processing that instrumentation with the goal of lower surgical delays and increased cost savings’,” states Scott.
