Certain, sooner: How Advanced Sterilization Products ensures more efficient load sterility verification

Advanced Sterilization Products gets recognised at the Healthcare Asia Medtech Awards 2022.

With the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, a higher demand for sterilisation arose, as medical institutions need to ensure that there is zero chance for contamination when it comes to sensitive and rapid operations.

Whilst the process takes time to ensure quality, Advanced Sterilization Products (ASP) understood that making this process faster while not compromising on quality can be a game-changer for the industry, and in doing so was awarded at the Healthcare Asia Medtech Awards 2022 with the Product Innovation Award - South Korea Award and the Employee Engagement Initiative of the Year - India Award for their efforts in boosting their Indian team’s morale amidst the global crisis.

The awards programme recognises remarkable performances or cutting-edge development from Medtech companies across Asia, and ASP’s innovation of accelerating the sterilisation process with their STERRAD VELOCITY™ Biological Indicator (BI)/Process Challenge Device (PCD) distinguished them from their competition.

Safer and more certain for a lot less time

With the need to ensure faster and cleaner sterilisation of products amidst rapid operations in hospitals, Advanced Sterilization Products (ASP) has developed the STERRAD VELOCITY™ Biological Indicator (BI)/Process Challenge Device (PCD), which was made commercially available in several Asia Pacific countries in August 2021. It is used to monitor loads and assess process performance for STERRAD™ Systems, a crucial step to verify load sterility for critical and semi-critical surgical instruments prior to releasing them to the operating room.

The technology now provides a faster BI read time in 15 minutes, and an automated record-keeping and intelligent guided user interface, so that STERRAD™ System users can focus on protecting patients.

STERRAD VELOCITY™ BI/PCD provides the protection of a rapid read PCD for STERRAD™ Systems that meet the elevated standard of AAMI recommended guidelines. AAMI ST58:2013/(R) 2018 states frequent monitoring may mitigate the many factors that could affect cycle variation and reduce risk to patients. It is for this reason AAMI ST58 recommends using a PCD with the appropriate BI daily, but preferably in every sterilisation cycle.

ASP South Korea has also utilised technologies and social media to market this launch, as the organisation held webinars and video advertisements, as well as launched social media content about the BI/PCD claim.

Celebrating milestones with ASP India

With COVID-19 presenting a glaring challenge to the way work is conducted, India was going through a particularly difficult time, and even more so for ASP India which went live during the crisis. The entirety of the India team has had to realign priorities to embrace new technologies in order to stay productive and ensure business continuity.

Such challenges present a threat to employee morale, especially with the loss of a team member to the pandemic. ASP India’s 1st year anniversary proceeded with a celebration, not only with the team members but also with their families on the 7th of September 2021 through Zoom.

Employees at all levels were involved, with leaders sharing inspiring messages in a special video broadcast to the team, with the event featuring games, contests, and performances for the team members and their families, with other employees from the Asia Pacific region joining in.