Saline is the lifeblood of all hospitals and medical systems, allowing surgeons to rehydrate patients, dilute medications, and perform life saving surgeries. The current saline market is controlled by five companies worldwide. These companies will ship pre-bagged saline from their warehouses to hospitals and organizations. This process is time consuming, expensive, and harmful to the environment. Many hospitals around the world have an insufficient amount of saline to perform routine medical procedures. Saline supply has been subject to a variety of stressors and has been in intermittent shortage since the early 2000s. Most recently, critical shortages of intravenous (IV) saline were seen after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, which is home to one of the largest medical saline manufacturing plants. The effects of this devastation (e.g., power outages and lack of clean water) are still being seen today, as certain 0.9% injectable saline bags remain in shortage.
These five companies ship 40 million bags of saline to over 7,000 hospitals…per month.
In addition to a lack of supplies, many organizations face transportation barriers when bringing their heavy saline supplies from place to place. Organizations with this issue include the United States Military, at home IV therapies, Cruise ships, ambulance services, and disaster relief teams.
There are very few devices that are being developed to produce surgical grade saline. A problem that these devices are facing is a filtration system that prevents membrane fouling, which is when the filter is polluted with debris and microorganisms that shorten the lifespan of the filter and require constant maintenance.
Secure Surgical Solutions devices’ overcomes the membrane fouling by equipping the filter with a patented electric field that assists in clearing the membrane and extending the lifespan of the device. The device is able to function for extended periods of time without the need for membrane maintenance or replacement.