New System Tracks Instruments and Sponges During Surgery

A new radio frequency identification (RFID) -based system goes beyond counting sponges, adding surgical instrument counts in the operating room (OR) to its arsenal.

The ORLocate system is specifically designed to improve patient safety and decrease complex and time-consuming counting procedures in the OR that are prone to human error. The system uses RFID chips--about the size of a small hearing aid battery--to tag each item with a unique RFID identity. The tagged instruments and sponges are detected via antennas located throughout the sterile field, and a robust software application continuously and automatically performs the counting. Before surgical procedures, a count of items is registered, and as they are used, the information is logged electronically. Before the procedure is completed, the ORLocate reconciles all counts to ensure that each item is accounted for.

The RFID technology allows the ORLocate system to provide a complete and integrated solution to help reduce cases of retained surgical items in patients' bodies; combine tracking technology and asset management services to meet healthcare standards; potentially increase efficiency of operating room logistics and workflow processes; reduce time-consuming counting and inventory efforts; enable simple and accurate packing of surgery sets in the sterile processing department; and enable hospitals to provide higher and safer quality of care for patients.

Along with the OR system, the ORLocate system offers an additional platform for use in the hospital sterile processing and distribution (SPD) departments that provides advanced tracking solutions for the lifecycle of surgical instruments. This is done by enabling simple and accurate packing of surgery sets in the sterile processing department. Instruments are tagged and carefully tracked in the system, allowing hospitals to maximize the overall productivity while automatically identifying defective instruments that could pose a risk to patient care and instruments that need maintenance. The ORLocate system is a product of Haldor Advanced Technologies (Maumelle, AR, USA), and has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

"Surgical teams must rely today on manually counting surgical items to ensure that sponges and instruments are not left in patients,” said Jacob Poremba, CEO and president of Haldor Advanced Technologies. "This leaves enough room for errors, causing large hospitals to experience about two to four cases annually of a surgical item left inside a patient after surgery.”

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Haldor Advanced Technologies