Frost & Sullivan recognizes IDENTI Medical for increasing operating room efficiency with Its advanced inventory management technology.

This month we were informed that we won an important and prestigious award from Frost & Sullivan. For those unfamiliar, every year the Frost & Sullivan Research Institute awards Most Innovative Products awards in several categories. F&S applies a rigorous analytical process to identify unique initiatives and innovative companies. They then evaluate multiple nominees by best practices criteria across two dimensions for each nominated company in each of the award categories to determine the final award recipient. This process was applied to IDENTI Medical and after a rigorous process of in-depth research of the healthcare industry, F&S awarded the coveted title: Most Innovative Product for 2022 In the Operating Room (OR) Inventory Management Solutions Space to IDENTI Medical.

“IDENTI Medical excels in many of the criteria in the operating room (OR) inventory management solutions space,” says Ram Ravi an F&S analyst who examined the company and its activities

and created a detailed report which is summarized here.

The award criteria:

• Match to needs: price and performance value
• Reliability: customer purchase experience
• Quality: customer ownership experience
• Positioning: customer service experience
• Design: brand equity.

Detailed in-depth in the report is Snap & Go™, our solution for capturing data in surgical areas using software based on a combination of patented technologies: image processing, machine learning, optical character recognition (OCR), and information collection request (ICR). The IDENTIPLATFORM™ is AI-driven cloud software that integrates with all types of healthcare facility systems.

Why do hospitals need inventory automation?

Hospitals’ operating rooms and procedural rooms are the most difficult environments to manage within the hospital due to the many emergencies and ongoing uncertainties, which becomes a breeding ground for inventory mismanagement leading to significant monetary losses, litigations, and patient safety issues. Until now the tools and solutions available were based on barcode scanning, manual keying, and tagging techniques to track inventory and manage stock replenishment. These solutions fail to capture all relevant data, especially for surgical implants. A few other reasons are:

• In the healthcare industry, supply chain inventory couriers don’t typically manage behind the red line. Commodity products may be managed by the supply chain management department but implants and high-cost medical devices are managed by the surgical team, who have not been trained to act as inventory clerks.

• Second, inventory coordinators most often report to the Surgery department and not the Supply Chain department. If something is missing, expired, or overstocked it is reported to specialty departments like Orthopedics, Neurosurgery, and Cardiology. The information is reported to the responsible Registered Nurse managing the department. Nurses manage the inventory not trusting anyone else to do it, following dozens of cases in which items were missing when needed. In the Cath lab, the Supply Chain department doesn’t typically manage complex medical devices or consignments.

• Finally, though it’s hard to believe in 2022, expiry controls, inventory management, and demand planning, are mostly manual processes. An average operating room can have as many as 5,000 individual supplies to manage with no Inventory Management technology.

Enhanced Customer Experience through “Out-of-the-box” Solutions

In an attempt to solve the problems discussed above, we at IDENTI Medical tried to get to the root of the problem. What is the reason for the current situation? Why do the available tools fail to

provide a comprehensive solution? The answer we got is clear: In the medical environment, there is no way to capture the required information accurately and conveniently.

After all, when information visibility is low it is difficult to act.

Strategic planning, contract management, billing reconciliation, expiry control, patent safety, and nurses’ workflow all become more efficient with the right data in place. As written in the report by Ram Rami: “IDENTI significantly improves efficiency and patient safety with daily inventory reports that leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to increase accuracy and productivity for healthcare providers.”

The value of “ease of use,” is seen as a foremost criterion by us and is applied to all of our products. SNAP&GO™ was designed to simplify data collection in ORs. The system eliminates manual errors and the need to train RNs to use barcode technology. The system also frees nurses from the time-consuming, labor-intensive task of entering and tagging data into a database. As part of our inventory management solutions portfolio, we offer other data-capture products such as RFID-based smart cabinets, narcotics cabinets, and Kanban and PAR (periodic automatic replenishment) solutions that enable automated tracking and real-time data on assets and consumables throughout the medical institution. By subscribing to IDENTI Medical’s solutions, customers can capitalize on a holistic platform of hardware, software, database, and connectivity products.

With our platform, hospitals can snap (photograph) each product’s packaging and use the information on it to keep track of stock consumption, guarantee product replenishment, and much more. Snap & Go enables hospitals to replace barcodes and manage their inventory with effective image recognition sensors and real-time tracking, facilitating cost-effective medical product management.

According to Ram Ravi, “IDENTI Medical’s revolutionary inventory management solution showcases the company’s innovation acumen and proactivity in addressing niche OR challenges that usually go unnoticed and are a growing black hole for hospitals. The system converts images into machine-readable data that any hospital system, such as EHR, business intelligence and analytics, enterprise resource planning, and maintenance management information system, can access and use through the company’s cloud-based AI management software, IDENTIPLATFORM™.”

Finally, the F&S report ends with a description of the positive experiences by our customers over the years in particular with Snap & Go. Hillel Yaffe Medical Center, for instance, is a hospital in Israel with more than 500 beds. Before implementing Snap & Go, the hospital managed its inventory replenishment workflows manually in all 10 of its ORs and encountered challenges such as stock mismanagement, revenue loss, and increased spending on supplies. The hospital described its ORs as a black hole with no information on inventory. It adopted Snap & Go which took three days to train all staff to use. The hospital saw improved results through optimized stock replenishment and reduced time and labor. With healthcare customers at the heart of its solution development, we believe that we are well-positioned to grow in the OR Inventory Management Solutions market. Our innovative solutions and AI management software enable us to enhance our global presence.

To read the full report click here.

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