How A Large Pharmaceutical Manufacturer Gained Visibility Into Usage Of Key Surgical Technology

A pharmaceutical company that supplies highly valuable medical devices to hospitals and clinics throughout the United States and abroad (roughly 250,000 within the continental U.S.) needed to provide periodic maintenance and refurbishment during the device lifecycle. Previously, the company identified and tracked refurbished medical devices manually – receiving the machines from the manufacturer, opening each individually, reviewing the serial number, repackaging and shipping to the final destination, where the same process would be repeated. Because of this manual process, there was no way of properly tracking the delivery of these medical devices to the intended hospitals and since there are often 20‐30 surgical suites at each hospital there was even less likelihood that once within the hospital, these machines could be tracked to the suite in which they resided – making regular maintenance tracking an utter nightmare.

The pharmaceutical company needed a way to automate the tracking and maintenance schedules of these machines a) to keep them well maintained, b) for better inventory accuracy and c) to have better visibility into hospital usage. The latter was extremely important because the medical devices are used in conjunction with the company’s medicine. Therefore, if a hospital is not using the medical equipment, then the company also knows that they are not using the corresponding medicine. When made aware of the situation, the pharmaceutical company can make the appropriate follow ups to determine why the drug is no longer in use and whether they can re‐engage with the hospital or clinic to get them using it again or need to remove the equipment.