Single-use device reprocessing has been a great success that produces substantial savings for participating cardiology programs. However, we have barely scratched the surface in terms of savings. To realize higher savings, there are really only two things we can do:
Innovative Health’s newly established Emerging Technologies team is committed to breaking the boundaries of reprocessing. It has already secured patents for micro-lumen cleaning, and they have challenged – and conquered – device reprocessing, where others have said reprocessing is impossible. Our Emerging Technologies team is an important investment in the future of reprocessing.
With the formation of the team, the goal is set to conquer even more technologies for reprocessing and, thereby, increase savings for hospitals. But that’s not all. The team has also been tasked with introducing single-use device reprocessing in new modalities and clinical areas. The team has already targeted savings opportunities outside of the EP lab: The annual savings potential in the Cardiac Cath Lab (Interventional Cardiology) is estimated to be hundreds of millions of dollars a year – similar to the savings that can be achieved in the EP lab. We are expecting our first Cath lab device clearance within a few months.
Annually, about 570,000 EP procedures are conducted in the US. In the Cath lab, about 2,700,000 (!) procedures are conducted by Interventional Cardiologists. Cath lab procedures are typically (but not always) less expensive than EP procedures, but lots of devices are used, and procedure economics are a challenge, especially for more complex procedures. We estimate that within a fairly short amount of time, Innovative Health will be able to help Cath labs reduce device costs by between 12% and 30% - with the more complex procedures realizing the highest cost savings.
The Emerging Technologies team will be tackling new device modalities in the Cath Lab, and the engineers are quickly developing cleaning, testing and inspection methodologies to ensure these devices can be safely reprocessed and reused without any functional differences to the new device. We have enabled EP labs to reduce their costs considerably through single-use device reprocessing – and now, we are excited to take these savings across the hall to the Cath Lab and offer similar financial benefits to our colleagues in Interventional Cardiology.