How iVascular Modernised Hospital Stock Counts with Orca Scan

With over 14 years of experience in the medical field, iVascular focus on distributing and maintaining vascular devices used in hospitals and conduct thorough inventory stock counts at over 170 consignment locations, every 6 months.

iVascular have recently implemented Orca Scan to help track these stock counts, and have seen time savings of over 75% 🤯 Find out how they did it, and how you can too! 👇

The Challenge:

We met with Ralf, iVascular’s General Manager, to discuss his role and the challenges his team were facing before implementing Orca Scan to improve their customer consignment processes.

Manual data entry was the norm for Ralf’s team which meant travelling to hospitals to count devices and products on site, and then manually recording each barcode number into an Excel spreadsheet in order to identify stock levels and any discrepancies.

This approach made it difficult to track stock levels accurately. If an error occurred during the stock check, the team would need to do a second count and manually review the stock within each hospital to ensure that all medical devices were accounted for, and the hospital can continue to run efficiently. Every mistake was costly, as a unit can charge a hospital anywhere from $250 - $2000, so getting it right first time, was key.

Unfortunately, Ralf noticed a high number of human errors with manual data entry and, due to sanitary requirements at hospitals and laboratory sites, he needed a low-cost digital solution that wasn’t reliant on laptops for recording data…that’s when he found Orca Scan 💡

A little bit of context:

Founded in 2010, iVascular is a worldwide supplier with a mission to develop medical devices and therapies to treat vascular disorders using technology and innovation to mark their claim as industry experts and market leaders. Working with hundreds of hospitals across the world, iVascular carefully distribute and maintain stock of medical devices by conducting in person inventory stock counts twice a year.

Before implementing Orca Scan, it took the team about an hour to complete a stock count…_that’s 170 hours just counting stock…_😲 Plus hours of travel, and time at the office manually inputting data into Excel.

This method is not only time consuming and prone to human errors, but was out of touch with modern technology for such a forward thinking, innovative company. So, they looked for an innovative solution 👏

The Solution:

The team at iVascular have implemented our Medical Device Tracking Solution to conduct regular customer stock counts at over 170 consignment locations.

The Orca Scan Medical Device Tracking template automatically extracts key information from a UDI barcode, from the Device Identifier, Serial Number, to Manufacturer/Production Date, and Lot Number, and inputs this into relevant columns in an Orca sheet.

Note: these columns are all customisable so you can add/ remove columns to capture exactly you need.

Automatic data capture 💥

iVascular monitor over 1000 devices, so when the team scans a UDI barcode on site, Orca Scan automatically captures the following information:

1. Barcode Number
2. Description
3. Reference Number
4. LOT Number
5. Expiry Date
6. Device Identifier
7. Units in Stock
8. Quantities Scanned

Furthermore, Ralf uses an Orca Scan Master Sheet to capture data from all locations and categorise information from GTINs, internal reference numbers, and descriptions. He has a dedicated sheet for each hospital so once a device has been scanned, the master sheet will look for match, if it finds one all data will be pulled from the data source into the correct hospital sheet via our Lookup URL. Meaning Ralf can see all the data he needs, when he needs it, without having to input it multiple times.

Triggers

The team use triggers to notify them when an item has passed its expiry date, or has an invalid UDI barcode. This is to ensure that the hospitals can be confident their products and devices are safe to use, and have the data to back this up.

Integrations

Ralf uses our Live Data URL integration so the team can automatically pull data from an Orca sheet into Excel spreadsheets without having to manually update them.

Attachments

The team are also using a handful of Orca Scans premium features so they can capture even more information per scan. Photos and attachments allow the team to provide extra information, including noting damages, package changes, and device information in the form of photos, .doc, .csv, .pdf, and more.

Has the solution been successful?

With the help of our solution, Ralf and his team have been able to drastically reduce the time spent completing stock counts to just 15 minutes at each location… that’s a massive 75% of time saved with Orca Scan 👏

This means the team now only need to send one employee to each hospital to conduct a stock count; confident that they can complete a stock check in a fraction of the time, allowing the rest of the team to attend other locations and increase overall efficiency.

Additionally, by using an Orca master sheet, Ralf can review and manage any issues in real-time from the comfort of his office, without needing to be on site or return to a hospital to manually check discrepancies. This means all mistakes can be dealt with quickly, reducing any further cost implications for his team and the customer.

How can you implement this solution?

This solution is now available using Orca Scan’s out-of-the-box Medical Device and Drug-tracking solutions. If you need help customising our medical device solution, get in touch or book a demo with our Customer Success Team.

Thank you

A big thank you to Ralf and his team at iVascular for sharing your customer story with us, and we’re delighted that Orca Scan is helping to make your inventory scanning easier every day 🙏