Surgical Instrument Tracking Systems Market Insights: An Effective Solution for Patient Safety

The tracking systems can be used for tracking medical devices, surgical instruments, and other surgical tools to ensure patient safety and inventory management. The number of retained surgical instrument cases is growing worldwide. There are different instruments such as needles, safety pins, knife blades, scalpels, scissors, and forceps that are left behind in a patient’s body during a surgery. The retained surgical instrument can cause several serious health issues, including severe pain, organ damage, infection, and even lead to death. Thus, many hospitals and surgical centers are adopting surgical instruments tracking system for patient safety to avoid instrument misplacement.

There are various technologies, such as linear barcodes, 2D barcodes, and RFID, that are used in the surgical instruments tracking systems. The advanced 2D barcodes and RFID technology provides high quality, reliability, and ease of handling in tracking surgical instruments and are popular in the market. Surgical instruments tracking system allows hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers to document each and every instrument’s vital statistics, such as name, image, manufacturer, location, number of sterilization cycles, date of purchase, and repair history. This system provides patient safety, asset & inventory management, and cost-savings benefits for the health care institutions.

Global surgical instrument tracking systems market share, by region, 2015

                                    

Increase in geriatric population along with prevalence of chronic diseases leads to increasing number of surgical procedures. As stated by WHO, people aged 85 years and above are expected to grow from 14 million to 19 million by 2020 and to 40 million by 2050. Moreover, according to OMICS International Conference, 2015, annually more than 234 million surgical procedures are performed worldwide. The developing healthcare infrastructure and high per capita income leads to increased demand for high-end technology and products for surgery, including instrument tracking solutions. Thus, the adoption of surgical instruments tracking system is expected to increase in near future.

The U.S. FDA has introduced a unique device identification system for appropriate identification of medical devices and instruments through their supply chain and application. According to this, most of the medical devices will possess Unique Device Identifier (UDI) in machine- and human-readable form. The UDI system will be fully implemented into the healthcare supply chain over several years. UDI implementation is expected to improve device post market scrutiny and improve patient safety.

As the surgical instrument tracking is growing rapidly, several leading vendors have begun focusing on strategic collaboration and partnerships to sustain the sector and gain higher revenue share. For instance, in May 2016, Haldor Advanced Technologies Ltd and Hill-Rom entered into a global distribution agreement for ORLocate suite of technology and products. Also, advanced product development endeavors assist vendors in strengthening their position in the industry.

Currently, there are several global and local vendors present in this market. Some key players are Censis Technologies, Inc.; Xerafy; Getinge Group, Haldor Advanced Technologies. Ltd.; Materials Management Microsystems, Inc.; B. Braun Melsungen AG; and Becton, Dickinson and Company.

  In-depth report on global surgical instrument tracking systems market by Grand View Research:

http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/surgical-instrument-tracking-systems-market