Galilee Medical Center in northern Israel recently cut the ribbon on a first-of-its-kind smart room for operating room inventory management.

This unique system was developed in Israel by software firm Autonomi of Bnei Brak in cooperation with Netanya-based Sarel, which supplies medical equipment and medicines to Israeli public hospitals.

Yoav Kestel, CEO of Autonomi, said, “After years of developing systems for managing prescription drug inventory for the American market, we moved to the next level and expanded the system to manage medical equipment inventory in medical institutions in general and operating rooms in particular.”

Kestel said inventory management or operating rooms is a complex manual task that is prone to error.

On average, 15 percent of medical equipment and medicines in hospitals is thrown away or lost as a result of over-ordering, and sometimes medical procedures are postponed due to a lack of stock in real time.

“Lack of stock may lead to urgent and expensive deliveries and even to medical emergencies, and on the other hand, sometimes excess stock expires,” said Kestel.

Switching to the new autonomous “smart room” technology doesn’t require any new infrastructure, he added.

“Using the autonomous system, it is possible at any given moment to know what the inventory levels are per item, so that the medical center places new orders based on minimum quantities that it updates in the management system,” said Kestel.

The system keeps track of medical equipment from the moment it enters the medical center until it is used, which even includes implantation in a patient’s body.

Avi Buskila, CEO of Sarel, said that automating and streamlining the inventory process enables medical staff to treat patients efficiently and provide them with better service.

“We consider it a great privilege to be the first to lead such technology in Israel and are convinced that more hospitals will want to adopt it in order to advance today’s work processes,” Buskila said.