Thursday, June 14, 2007
No Sponge Left Behind: Surgical Sponge Counting System Gets FDA Approval
Filed under: Surgery
According to ClearCount Inc, the makers of the world's first FDA approved RFID sponge tracking system, every 120 minutes a retained foreign body occurs in the US. OUCH.
The SmartSponge System™ is the first of a family of products developed by Pittsburgh-based ClearCount Medical Solutions. The system is a revolutionary product that was designed to replace the antiquated method of manual counting using sponge counter bags. It consists of a handheld wand-scanning device used to detect commonly used surgical gauze sponges that have been fitted with a radiofrequency identification (RFID) chip approximately the size of a penny.Technology Overview
The ClearCount SmartSponge System is based on Radio Frequency Identification technology (RFID).RFID systems are comprised of two basic components: a reader and tags which are applied to the items to be tracked. RFID tags are tiny microchips that act as transponders listening for a radio signal sent by transceivers, or RFID scanners. When a transponder RFID chip sewn onto the sponge receives a certain radio query, the sponge responds with a unique ID code back to the scanner. RFID tags are powered by the radio signal from the scanner. These broadcast signals are designed to be read between a few inches and several feet away, depending on the size and power driving the RFID tags.
Advantages
ClearCount's SmartSponge System™ has the ability to count multiple sponges at once without separation. Our system also does not require line of sight technology similar to barcode technology. This means no longer separating soiled sponges!Our SmartSponge System™ also has the ability to distinguish different types of sponges such as a 4x4 and lap sponge.
Benefits of RFID include:
- Passive: Non emitting tag and contains no battery
- Small: RFID tag is the size of a penny
- No line-of-sight required to detect sponges
- Can read multiple sponges simultaneously
- Can't count the same sponge twice
They aren't happy just counting sponges, and hope to equip surgical instruments with radio chips as well.
Product Page...
(hat tip: Medical Connectivity)
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