Wellington
A chance conversation about the difficulties that some medical specialists have to in-housedisinfect and sterilise their equipment has resulted in a potential world-wide market of millionsand the Bayer Innovators Award 2010 in Design and Engineering for Stella Performance Ltd.
The Tauranga-based subsidiary of British company Tristel PLC is now producing a relatively smalland cost-effective manual disinfectant system that handles the parent company’s chlorine dioxidesterilant chemistry in a single-use product.
The Stella Performance unit, about the size of a small computer printer, has received enormousexcitement whenever it has been exhibited at medical conferences or congresses said New Zealanddirector Justine Beale.
“It falls into a gap that there has been no solution for,” she said. “Our product is abouta simplicity and sophistication of design, and providing a safer and better way to processinstruments than is currently available.”
The product’s development came about following a conversation over a year ago between localurologist Mark Fraundorfer and Tristel chief executive Paul Swinney. Fraundorfer had expressedfrustration at the cost and time ineffective ways of decontaminating his flexible cystoscopes forhis medical practice.
What Stella has produced, along with product development manager Jeremy Turner, is a disinfectionsystem that operates independently of mains power, requires no maintenance, and eliminates storageof the disinfectant in the compartment in which the instrument is disinfected, along with anincorporated traceability system.
Such an in-house system allows an instrument to be freed up within a practice and allows morepatients to be seen Beale said.
“A special component is the Stella I.Q, which is a battery operated device that directs thedisinfection process through its five minute cycle,” she said. “This produces a validation codefor the instrument that a certain process has been carried out. You can plug the Stella I.Q. in acomputer via our software, and produce a report that shows what has happened to that instrument forcomplete traceability.”
As well as being designed in New Zealand, most of its components are sourced from this countryand assembly also takes place here.
Various patents have been taken out on the decontaminator, including its design, and distributionwill take place through Tristel Beale said.