STERILIZATION CENTRAL

The delivery of a sterile, ready-to-use medical device is vital to delivering safe and effective patient care. Although conceptually a simple idea, the actual processes involved in delivering a sterile medical device to the sterile field involves a complex web of activities and stakeholders.

The theme of the 2019 Kilmer Conference, held in Dublin, Ireland, was “Collaborate to Innovate.” During the conference, a group of packaging-minded professionals, including packaging engineers, sterility assurance professionals, medical device manufacturers, healthcare delivery professionals, academicians, and standards professionals, held an ad hoc meeting. The opening question for participants was, “Are there any issues with sterile packaging that should be addressed collaboratively by the industry?” This open-ended question elicited a wide range of answers, all of which added up to the answer being “yes.”

The group’s most significant realization was that the chain of sterile packaging stakeholder groups exist within a series of silos. As a result, the group’s mission became breaking down those silos and working together to solve “wicked” problems. What started as an ad hoc meeting has evolved into a multidisciplinary effort to innovate the medical packaging space. Thus, the Kilmer innovations in Packaging (KiiP) project group was born.

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