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Solstice Medical LLC has reached the production stage for its radio-frequency identification products and doubled in size in the last year.
The RFID tags and accompanying software package and scanning equipment are able to detect the items in an operating room or storage area, allowing hospitals and medical-device makers to better keep track of what they have and where it is located.
The technology won Solstice Medical an Innovation Award in the health-care category as well as the Innovator of the Year award last year. At that time, the company had fewer than 10 employees and still was in preproduction stages. The employee count has increased to 16 in the year since and the technology now is available commercially, said company President and CEO Dan Sands. Revenue has doubled and Solstice continues to recruit software engineers and others.
Among Solstice Medical’s target markets is the radiation oncology industry. The RFID system can be used to track items used for cancer treatments and ensure they are matched with the right patients. Scanners stationed in treatment areas detect the tags on the items, and the software determines whether they are the proper devices ordered for that patient.
Sands said the company already has contracts for the technology pending in France, Canada and the United States.
“The radiation oncology application will be launched globally,” he said.
The system also can be helpful for implant and instrument dealers who need to keep track of inventory. Dealers can access information about their products through a secure online portal, including device history, location and expiration dates.
Solstice Medical is working with several companies in Warsaw to include its special RFID tags on surgical instrument cases and use them for tracking purposes. Sands would not name the companies specifically, but said one already has 30,000 tags in use and another deal is pending with an instrument maker for 4 million tags.
“Once they get in the market, (the companies can) use (the tags) to track that (instrument kit),” he said.
Sands said Solstice expects to expand the system for use in the cardiovascular market. He also said the company is working with local hospitals as a test bed to expand its technology, which eventually could be available to track items in those facilities.
In the operating room, the software and RFID tags can help surgical staff keep track of all of the instruments that are used. The RFID tags are metal and can survive the sterilization process.
Sands said the company is looking to graduate from the Northeast Indiana Innovation Center’s business incubator, where it landed after it was founded in 2005. He hopes to find a new location either on the Fort Wayne-based NIIC campus or somewhere else in the city in the first quarter of next year.
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