by
Lisa Chamoff, Contributing Reporter | February 20, 2015
From the January/February 2015 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
“Our SPD [sterile processing department] design team applies proven lean manufacturing principles and process simulation studies with the primary focus on process efficiency,” Smith says. “The combination of these two results in roughly 30 percent more space for future growth or other needs in the SPD.”
Breaking into the sterilizer market
While established companies like Getinge and STERIS have the greatest representation among hospitals, there are other companies now bringing new sterilizers to the market One such company is Skytron — mostly known for surgical tables, lights and booms, — which officially launched its Integrity line of steam sterilizers in September. “It was challenging to take a 100-year-old technology and bring something unique to the market,” says Jason Simon, Skytron’s product manager for infection prevention.
The company, which partnered on the product with Sakura Seiki, a leader in steam sterilization in Japan, also used recommended parameters from the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation guidelines. Simon says the idea was for the new product to meet the needs of sterile processing managers by creating a fast and easy way to create custom and extended steam cycles.
Simon says, for example, that with an older sterilizer, if a facility gets a new da Vinci Xi handpiece that needs to be sterilized for a four-minute exposure time and 50-minute dry cycle, they would have to erase one of the cycles and reprogram it for that one tray. Then it would take another 15 minutes to change it back. With Skytron’s sterilizers, users can create custom steam cycles in just a few seconds and add a button with a shortcut for the cycles to the tabletlike LCD touch screen.
“We really made a very simple, intuitive control system,” Simon says. The company started a reference-site program a couple of years ago and installed units at several facilities around the country. “Because Skytron was new to the sterilization world, we wanted to make sure we had a number of facilities around the country that would take a perceived risk by going with an unknown product,” Simon says. “We saw it as a natural fit as far as our product mix and our focus on the OR. We always knew infection prevention was somewhere we’d want to go.”
Filling new markets
Sterilizer manufacturers are also looking to fill new markets. David Morganstern, director of sales and marketing for Tuttnauer, says the company is waiting for FDA clearance on a new product that is geared toward ambulatory surgery centers. He says it will fill the niche between a tabletop sterilizer and a larger piece of equipment. Tuttnauer has also been active in detailing the role sterilizers would play in a hospital’s response to an outbreak of Ebola or other highly infectious diseases. Regional networks should consider buying and storing a couple of mobile, double-door sterilizers with effluent systems and have them sitting on a shelf ready to go, Morganstern says.
