Belimed

Philippe Heim

The visions of the future are smart: smart cities, smart transport, smart houses, and also smart hospitals. We often hear that smart cities will eventually become networks for connected smart devices; their residents will be familiar with smart traffic, which will result in fewer traffic jams, special roads for autonomous vehicles, and underground freight routes. Wearables will monitor our health, our heart rate, our overall wellbeing and alert us when we will need to see a doctor. We will have smart hospitals with platforms offering accurate remote diagnoses. Digital connected healthcare will change the patient experience. The digitalisation era we are living in is paving the way to better health services for everyone and we at Belimed are not just mere bystanders.

Paving the Way to Smart CSSDs

For some time now, scientists have been forecasting a growing and ageing population. The rise in population could lead to a rapid increase in the prevalence of various infectious diseases. Some forecast that many of the upcoming diseases will require medical intervention and surgery, meaning pressure on the healthcare system will further increase over time. All countries face major challenges in ensuring that their healthcare systems are ready to make the most of this shift. Various studies suggest that digitalised hospitals are already showing they have the largest potential to make a ‘rapid and positive impact’ on pressurised healthcare infrastructure and operations. Smart hospitals, which are the frontrunners of digital transformation of the healthcare industry, ensure some very important ingredients for future medical care, such as maximised productivity, better patient satisfaction, and flexibility. However, in order to seize the potential of digitalisation, all the subsystems need to be smart as well, including Central Sterile Service Departments (CSSDs). They are crucial piece of the puzzle for any medical procedure – for sterilising and disinfecting instruments and devices used during surgery and other medical procedures.

We ‘Co-Create’ with Our Customers

Belimed is a provider of product and service solutions for the sterilisation, disinfection and cleaning workflow of medical and surgical instruments. The sector we operate in is not immune to the changes brought about by digitalisation and the resulting ‘big data.’ Belimed’s washer-disinfectors and sterilisers produce up to two million data points per cycle, including program selection, chemical dosing quantities, temperature, water volumes, operating times and water conductivity. We are turning the huge amount of these data points into valuable insights for our customers. Innovation in the age of digital transformation starts with an accurate understanding of customers’ everyday problems. As Engineers of Confidence, we have been working extensively to offer our clients a solution. We have achieved new milestones in engineering thanks to our customers’ insights. In any business, cooperation is a win-win situation, which has been proven throughout numerous business cases in history, regardless of the industry or sector. However, at Belimed, we have gone a step further in ‘co-creation’ with the aim of achieving tangible benefits relatively quickly.

“Smart hospitals, which are the frontrunners of digital transformation of the healthcare industry, ensure some very important ingredients for future medical care, such as maximised productivity, better patient satisfaction, and flexibility”

Overcoming Hesitancy

Digitalising business has been a priority on the to-do lists of executives and IT leaders for nearly a decade. The pandemic has accelerated digitalisation initiatives within various healthcare departments. However, in these early stages of digitalising healthcare, customers are experiencing a high level of uncertainty. Over the past few years, the idea of transforming a CSSD into a digital business has been discussed and extended, but it can be hard for organisations to fully imagine their CSSD’s digital destination. Thanks to being included in the innovation process early on, as well as some already live pilot projects in Europe, Belimed’s ‘co-creation’ customers can enjoy the benefit of experimenting with innovative digital solutions at the early prototype stage and providing immediate feedback. It takes time to convince managers about the advantages digitalising a CSSD brings. The initial trepidation is similar to the early days of automobiles. The ‘monster’ on four wheels was feared at first, but decades later is an item one barely imagines life without. The same goes for innovation in our business.

The Future in Smart CSSDs

Belimed’s innovation SmartHub suite paves the way to the first smart CSSDs. SmartHub is a software solution based on different modules, which ensures that all relevant machine data is captured in real-time from any Belimed machine to be further processed. SmartHub provides a dashboard that shows insights into the machine cycle stages, thus keeping everyone working in the CSSD informed at all times. It also has the ability to collect and display batch information in easy-to-read PDF reports and allows for smooth integration to any Instrument Tracking System.

SmartHub can be run on-premise but unfolds its full potential as a web application – SmartHub Orbit. This is where all machine data is turned into actionable insights – and additional values. All relevant machine data and cycle statuses can be accessed at anytime from anywhere – from any browser and any device (notebook, mobile phone or tablet). This gives CSSD managers full control and will transform the way they work. SmartHub Orbit also enables E-Learning for the team operating the machines. The help for troubleshooting module also provides the ability for machines to be brought back into operation without outside assistance.

As the American physicist William Pollard said: “Without change, there is no innovation, creativity, or incentive for improvement. Those who initiate change will have a better opportunity to manage the change that is inevitable."