safe possibility.
When you have inefficiencies or ineffective technology, that's the time
to innovate. We've seen the powerful forces of re-engineering and re-
imagination bring this highly effective means of low-temperature steriliza-
tion back from the brink of hospital extinction.
Automated inventory management
If you're like many facility leaders, you struggle to answer basic ques-
tions about your inventory of instruments and implant trays. How
does your facility input, maintain and use clean inventory data? Are
you able to track all your instrument sets from sterile processing to
the OR to storage? This information can give you a better sense about
the instruments you really need and the ones that just collect dust on
your shelves. If you're relying on manual counts and memory to
locate your instrument trays, you're missing out on a trove of data
that could be very useful in the operations of your facility.
Facilities store, track and process thousands of instruments in a sin-
gle day. Even though the concept of asset management has been
around for decades in health care, we haven't seen consistent adoption
of the technologies that can make your life easier.
More and more, industry software and tech companies have begun
thinking outside the proverbial box of instrument trays, department
walls and information silos. They're leveraging analytical tools to
change the way reprocessing departments view their roles in
improving all aspects of perioperative care.
When it comes to asset management, we're seeing a growing utiliza-
tion and integration of what is known as "computer vision" technolo-
gy, or the idea of using cameras to see parts of the workflow and
respond in certain ways. Whereas traditional instrument tracking sys-
tems rely on bar codes and scanners, computer vision will let depart-
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