Real-time endoscope management solution

Historically, flexible endoscopes have been classified as semi-critical reusable instruments requiring a process of high level disinfection prior to use on patients. This is largely due to the equipment being heat labile and therefore not appropriate for autoclaving. The rapid growth in endoscopy services in recent years has placed increased demands on reprocessing departments and many Trusts have centralised their endoscopy reprocessing facilities using automated endoscope reprocessing (AER) equipment. The Health Act (2006)1 says that “providing an effective endoscope decontamination service within a safe environment is an essential requirement for every endoscopy unit in England.” For compliance purposes, it is also necessary to provide a clear audit trail to demonstrate the effective decontamination of flexible endoscopes. The British Society of Gastroenterology guidelines, for example, state that “it is important to ensure that the AER will irrigate all channels of each endoscope being processed and preferably verify that such irrigation has taken place. This facility should include alerting the user to endoscope blockages or disconnections within the AER”. Commenting on the importance of monitoring the endoscope decontamination process (in the August 2010 issue of The Clinical Services Journal) Ronald Wassenburg, joint managing director of Wassenburg & Co, who have been producing flexible endoscope decontamination solutions for 25 years, said: “When my father established the company, he understood the complexity of the endoscope and the challenge presented in cleaning the channels. He designed the entire monitoring and pumping systems around the endoscope itself... As a company we have strongly supported the use of automated monitoring systems to ensure the reprocessing of endoscopes is correctly performed and that all channels have been fully decontaminated by the wash-disinfector.”

Software solution

North Devon District Hospital in Barnstaple has become the first hospital in the UK to install Process Manager, a new endoscope management software system, designed by Wassenburg to be retrofitted to any of its washers produced from 2007 onwards. Wassenburg WD440 PT washers were installed in the endoscopy department at the hospital two years ago, replacing some older style machines. The WD440 PT model, for the washing and disinfection of flexible endoscopes is available with an independent monitoring system that monitors the critical process parameters via a separate controller which at North Devon District Hospital was installed on a stand-alone PC adjacent to the department. However, Northern Devon Healthcare NHS Trust was keen to move all applications onto a virtual server which could be backed up in real-time and which would ensure that no significant data was lost. The Trust had encountered some IT problems with the original reprocessing monitoring system, finding that it conflicted with other server-based applications. Lyn Green, manager of the endoscope unit at the hospital, explains: “We found that the existing hospital IT system and the new endoscope decontamination machine were not really that compatible and we suffered some problems with the machines not optimally functioning which caused some delays in lists. “Because Process Manager is linked via the web if we have any issues with the system we can get Wassenburg engineers to investigate remotely, which has resulted in us not having to bother our internal IT department so often. The traceability of scopes is also much better and Process Manager now provides us with more information about what is happening throughout the decontamination process.”