by
Lisa Chamoff, Contributing Reporter | April 04, 2016
From the April 2016 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Maintenance with monitoring
Remote monitoring is another relatively recent offering from sterilizer manufacturers. Belimed offers a remote monitoring technology, which uses sensors attached to the high-performance parts and inside the chamber of the sterilizer to monitor temperature, pressure and water flow. If a certain component starts to fall below a certain threshold, a service technician is notified with various communication methods.
This is “well before it ever gets to the point where it aborts a cycle or where a load is deemed non-sterile,” Smith says. “A sterilizer doesn’t just break, it starts to wear down. It will give off signals with the right sensors attached.” Smith says about 20 percent of its customer base has signed on to the service, and that the company is putting more of an emphasis on marketing it in 2016.
STERIS’ CS-iQ can also be used to monitor the washers and sterilizers for maintenance issues, and Tuttnauer offers remote monitoring, as well as the ability for hospitals to link up to eight sterilizers with a local computer for central supply supervisors to monitor in-house. Morganstern, of Tuttnauer, says the company provides standard in-service training to make sure its customers understand the equipment. “For a lot of facilities we go one step further and also offer training to the technical support staff [in the] biomed department,” Morganstern says.
The market for contract sterilization
Contract sterilization is generally limited to companies that sterilize single-use devices for the device manufacturers. Some hospitals have turned to contract sterilization for duodenoscopes, which are particularly challenging to disinfect, says Kathleen Hoffman, senior vice president for global environmental, health and safety at Sterigenics.
“We have a higher sterility assurance level than the high-level disinfection methods used at many hospitals with a liquid chemical disinfecting agent,” Hoffman says. The majority of hospitals have preferred to do the work in-house as contract sterilization comes with increased costs. Facilities have to increase the inventory of scopes if they’re sending them out to be sterilized and it also may be difficult to find a contract sterilization company that’s local, Hoffman says.
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