Devices & Diagnostics, Health IT, Hospitals, Startups

Remedify’s “cookbook” is designed to make sure surgical instruments actually get cleaned

The problem of hospital acquired infections is a new concept to most people. No one […]

The problem of hospital acquired infections is a new concept to most people. No one thinks about the potentially scary germs on hospital curtains and other surfaces when she is in a hospital bed trying to get well. The idea that the tools surgeons use to cut into patients are equally dirty is even more terrifying.

Avery Fisher and the team at Remedify are taking on this challenge so you don’t have to think about bits of bone stuck to surgical instruments, much less find the courage to ask about a hospital’s instrument sterilization program.

Fisher presented the business case for his startup company at the Healthbox Nashville demo day last week. He said the idea for the company came from a forward-looking hospital holding company.

“They saw an opportunity to improve access to information for their sterile technicians and become compliant with the agencies that accredit hospitals,” he said.

HCA and BlueCross BlueShield of TN are partners of Healthbox Nashville. Leaders from both companies provided strategic guidance and mentoring to all seven companies in the recent class.

One surgery can involve up to 400 instruments and these tools are becoming more and more complex.
“You can’t just steam clean everything any more,” Fisher said.

He described the current cleaning process this way:

  1. A technician has a question about how to clean an instrument
  2. The supervisor calls the manufacturer or looks up the information in a book
  3. The supervisor uses a fax or photo copy to train the technician

Fisher said that one potential customer he talked to described the current process this way: “Anything that doesn’t have a four-minute steam sterilization cycle trips us up and may not be done correctly.”

The first part of Remedify’s solution is to aggregate the cleaning manuals from the manufacturers, put them in the cloud, and make the information searchable. This is where the cookbook comes in. Remedify created a new language for the cleaning process by creating five icons to illustrate which tool requires which process. The cookbook recipes distill the most important information into pictures.

“By making every manufacturer’s instructions-for-use documents available in one place online, the next logical step was to take the most important information and make it easy to reference,” Fisher said.

The cookbook was built to help many stakeholders:

  • End users
  • Device makers
  • Sterilization equipment manufacturers
  • Regulatory and accreditation bodies
  • Hospital administrators

Remedify’s product is SaaS with a subscription cost of $1,000 per OR per year. Fisher predicted that his product could save a hospital $5,000 per OR per year on average.

In addition to making the cleaning process more efficient, Remedify’s system has the potential to reduce hospital acquired infection and to create an audit trail for the cleaning process. Fisher said there are not many regulations around this process yet, but predicted that will change soon.

Before the investment from Healthbox, the startup was self-funded and narrowly focused. Now Remedify has go-live projects at four facilities. The longer term goal is to focus on improvements along the entire surgery continuum. Fisher said the company is looking for investments from angel investors who understand the space.

Veronica Combs

Veronica is an independent journalist and communications strategist. For more than 10 years, she has covered health and healthcare with a focus on innovation and patient engagement. Most recently she managed strategic partnerships and communications for AIR Louisville, a digital health project focused on asthma. The team recruited 7 employer partners, enrolled 1,100 participants and collected more than 250,000 data points about rescue inhaler use. Veronica has worked for startups for almost 20 years doing everything from launching blogs, newsletters and patient communities to recruiting speakers, moderating panel conversations and developing new products. You can reach her on Twitter @vmcombs.

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