Michael Barbella, Managing Editor05.11.24
Partnerships and retrospection were the favored topics this past week on MPO's website.
The magazine's annual examination of the full-service outsourcing market took top billing, followed by a look back at the popularity of single-use device reprocessing at the turn of the millennium. Editor-in-Chief Sean Fenske rehashed the uproar over bacterial exposure at a California hospital due to improperly working sterilizers. According to Fenske's editor's letter (appearing in a previous employer's publication), the bacterial exposure was caused by faulty sterilization equipment that had gone unchecked for three months. The letter also claimed that hospital staff was aware of the problem but failed to fix or replace the units. The FDA issued guidance on single-use device reprocessing in 2000; by the time the Government Accountability Office published its report on the questionable practice eight years later, such cleaning protocols had all but ceased to exist. "I don't hear about this occurring today," Fenske wrote.
Indeed, single-use device reprocessing may not be as prevalent as it was more than two decades ago, but it hasn't completely disappeared. More aggressive regulations has helped improve the safety of this controversial practice.
Patient safety—past or present—is almost always a guaranteed website traffic driver, and this past week was no different. In addition to Fenske's Throwback Thursday exclusive, cybervisitors gravitated toward news of Tandem Diabetes Care’s Class I recall of Version 2.7 of the Apple iOS t:connect mobile app used with its t:slim X2 insulin pump with Control-IQ technology. The company is recalling version 2.7, released Feb. 12 on the iOs platform, of the app for the t:slim X2 pump by a correction, not product removal. The company identified a software issue that can cause the mobile app to crash and be automatically relaunched by iOs.
Other traffic drivers this week included QuidelOrtho's new president/CEO announcement, and an exclusive analysis of future quality and regulatory operations in medtech.
The magazine's annual examination of the full-service outsourcing market took top billing, followed by a look back at the popularity of single-use device reprocessing at the turn of the millennium. Editor-in-Chief Sean Fenske rehashed the uproar over bacterial exposure at a California hospital due to improperly working sterilizers. According to Fenske's editor's letter (appearing in a previous employer's publication), the bacterial exposure was caused by faulty sterilization equipment that had gone unchecked for three months. The letter also claimed that hospital staff was aware of the problem but failed to fix or replace the units. The FDA issued guidance on single-use device reprocessing in 2000; by the time the Government Accountability Office published its report on the questionable practice eight years later, such cleaning protocols had all but ceased to exist. "I don't hear about this occurring today," Fenske wrote.
Indeed, single-use device reprocessing may not be as prevalent as it was more than two decades ago, but it hasn't completely disappeared. More aggressive regulations has helped improve the safety of this controversial practice.
Patient safety—past or present—is almost always a guaranteed website traffic driver, and this past week was no different. In addition to Fenske's Throwback Thursday exclusive, cybervisitors gravitated toward news of Tandem Diabetes Care’s Class I recall of Version 2.7 of the Apple iOS t:connect mobile app used with its t:slim X2 insulin pump with Control-IQ technology. The company is recalling version 2.7, released Feb. 12 on the iOs platform, of the app for the t:slim X2 pump by a correction, not product removal. The company identified a software issue that can cause the mobile app to crash and be automatically relaunched by iOs.
Other traffic drivers this week included QuidelOrtho's new president/CEO announcement, and an exclusive analysis of future quality and regulatory operations in medtech.