Midbrook to Design Cleaning Tools

Midbrook Medical has announced a desire to work with manufacturers of medical devices in order to design them in a manner that can improve cleaning results. Midbrook hopes to use its experience in the cleaning industry to help device manufacturers create reusable tools that are both suitable for their intended use and easier to reprocess by point of use healthcare facilities.

A common problem with many medical devices currently on the market is that their design makes them difficult to clean. This is especially true of cannulated instruments, whose small interior lumen are a serious problem area where bioburden can become trapped. Obviously these tools are designed first and foremost to be suitable for their intended purpose. The issue is that manufacturers often design them without thinking about ways they could satisfy these requirements while also making the tools simpler and safer to clean prior to sterilization.

When tools are designed without cleaning in mind, the results are predictable. Instruments that must be cleaned to very high levels to ensure patient and staff safety are nearly impossible to adequately reprocess. For example, the interior lumen of suction tubes can have places near either end of the instrument where different pieces of material are joined, creating spaces where biological material can become trapped. Both manual brushing and flushing systems inadequately address this. Medical device manufacturers are not familiar with the difficulty of cleaning these instruments. This is where Midbrook lends its experience.

Midbrook has nearly 40 years of experience in the automotive and aerospace industry and is familiar with a wide range of problems related to washing. It is their hope that they can use this experience in conjunction with medical device manufacturers to design tools that will be easier to reprocess, both manually and automatically. In some cases, even a small change in design or materials could make a large difference when it comes to adequately cleaning an instrument. These are the types of changes that a device manufacturer with no experience in the cleaning industry might never think of.

When Midbrook Medical works directly with device manufacturers, they hope it will lead to the development of instruments that perform their task as required, but are also easier to clean. Cleaner tools lead to more consistent sterilization, which would lead to a safer hospital environment, with less risk of healthcare acquired infections among both patients and staff. This is the goal that all facilities should constantly be striving toward.