Stryker is a Fortune 500 company that provides world class medical technologies to hospitals worldwide. From surgical equipment to neurotechnology, Stryker impacts over 150 million patients annually across more than 75 countries.

Millions of surgical procedures are performed each year. Throughout each procedure, safety is critical to ensure the best outcome for the patient. The impact of retained surgical items is a major safety concern. Nearly 12 times daily, retained surgical items occur in the USA. Retained surgical items lead to financial strain, malpractice allegations, and threaten a patient’s wellbeing.

Our Surgical OR Instruments and Needle Tracking iOS app uses real-time tracking and verification checkpoints to improve accuracy and efficiency of tracking instruments within the operating room (OR).

When opening the app, the surgical operating room schedule is displayed. From there, the user may select a procedure to begin tracking. Once selected, the user is directed to pre-check, where initial scans of surgical tools are taken for automated tracking in addition to manual verification. During active surgery, a live feed and the use state of surgical tools is shown. A final post-check is enabled to verify all instruments and needles are accounted for.

Users view, update, and add surgical procedures with corresponding tool catalogs. If circumstances require, tool catalogs may be updated mid-procedure as well. Status logs from completed operations are also available for audit and analytical purposes.

Our app aligns with Stryker’s mission to make healthcare better by saving surgical personnel time, minimizing error and decreasing retained surgical items.

The app’s front end uses Swift, SwiftUI and UIKit. CoreML integrates our YOLO model and PyTorch. Node.js and Express.js are used to run the back end. The data is hosted on an Ubuntu Server.