SteriPack: A No-Touch Sterile Packaging Solution

Student Team: Steripack

Kathryn Farley, Neeraja Gollamudi, Gillian Foster, Nicholas Colonna, and Joseph Patrick

 

Sponsor:

Justin Rowland, B.S., MBA, Kapstone Medical

 

 

Project Description: 

Prior to entering an operating room, every device, component, and implant must be sterile. Devices required for procedures arrive at hospitals in one of two fashions; the device is either already sterile and ready to be used in the operating room, or the arriving item is non-sterile and needs to be sterilized before the device is ready for an operation. Currently, many devices in the latter category are typically stored within a large operation kit which contain all possible sizes of components and tools which may be necessary for a surgery. Any time this kit is used in the operating room or is possibly exposed to contaminants, the whole kit must be re-sterilized. Re-sterilization costs can be a heavy burden for hospitals, and as the number of annual medical procedures increase hospitals are no longer willing to accept the responsibility of sterilization. However, development and validation of customized sterile packaging, for devices in the arriving sterile classification, can cost hundreds of thousands in capital. The goal of SteriPack is to design a low-cost single device sterile packaging solution that facilitates the non-sterile to sterile hand-off and is easily customizable. The solution that SteriPack proposes makes use of novel mechanisms to ensure that the implant arrives at the surgical field sterile with minimal chance of being compromised. The design also incorporates a mechanism maintaining no-contact during the delivery period of the sterile object to the sterile field. Our device allows for a rapid and seamless delivery of a multitude of individual surgical components for hand and neck procedures without delivering unneeded components that would have to then be re-sterilized. The SteriPack solution works to provide a more efficient way to prepare for surgeries while reducing costs for medical device companies and hospitals.

 

 

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