SURGICAL SYSTEM REVENUE

Surgery is the mainstay of hospital revenue, and most facilities have dozens of operating rooms, altogether performing hundreds of procedures a day.  If, by efficient management (i.e. locating, sorting, delivering and sterilizing surgical tools), a hospital is able to add a single procedure per O.R. a day for, say, 200 days a year, a revenue stream can rise by tens of millions of dollars annually.  This is what GE Global Health has in mind for its automated system, involving robotics, RFID, and computer vision.  Thus, after laboratory and pharmacy automation, automated surgical tool processing appears to be the next big thing in materials management.  MORE

Image Credit:  Robotoic Trends