Plug and Play Tech Center is honored to be backing HITOTSU, providing medical device management SaaS products to replace paper-based medical device maintenance with cloud management. Their mission is to bring people in medical healthcare together.

Their products will reduce overtime and labor costs, and eliminate complicated interactions with medical device distributors. Currently, many hospitals have been using expensive and outdated on-premise products, but by switching to HITOTSU products, they can expect significant cost savings. Furthermore, the ability to collect and analyze medical device incident reports from a large number of hospitals in the cloud is highly worthwhile and can lead to research results for doctors and medical engineers.

HITOTSU aims to provide SaaS products with a subscription model to replace paper-based medical device maintenance with cloud management

Japan's medical industry hasn't evolved in over 20 years and is full of analog operations. For example, The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) released a report titled "Thorough Implementation of ICT in the Medical and Other Fields," which set a goal of "90% penetration of electronic medical records by 2020" in general hospitals (400 beds or more). However, the actual figure was less than 50% as of 2017. Similarly, medical device management operations in hospitals have not been digitized.

National Certified Medical Engineers (ME) handle, maintain, and inspect medical devices such as ventilators, artificial hearts and lungs for surgical operations, and dialysis machines that are essential for dialysis patients. In large hospitals with more than 400 beds, usually, each hospital has about 10-20 MEs. The number of medical devices to be maintained and inspected is in the thousands and more than 100 devices have to be inspected before surgical operations every day. Smaller hospitals are short on manpower and nurses, who are not originally in charge of medical device safety, are often put in charge of medical device safety.

The following four points are particularly problematic in medical device management:

1. Selection of Medical Devices: Inefficient and Inadequate Medical Device Information Gathering
   Each hospital purchases medical devices after receiving product explanations from sales representatives of medical device distributors, and the number of the distributors with whom MEs interact with can be as many as 100 or more. In addition, for the last two years, the number of meetings with medical device distributors has drastically decreased due to restrictions on access to medical institutions caused by COVID-19. Therefore, MEs and other medical staff cannot obtain information on medical devices in a timely manner.
   
2. Delivery of Medical Devices: Ordering Medical Devices by Phone
   The main method of ordering medical devices from hospitals to medical device manufacturers and distributors is still by telephone, and online orders are not common.
   
3. Medical Devices Management: Paper-Based or Hard-To-Use On-Premise Systems
   MEs are not able to concentrate on their original work, as they're busy with administrative work such as maintenance and inspection work for a huge amount of medical equipment and dealing with vendors every day, even though their main work is treatment, including handling medical devices during surgical operations. In terms of maintenance and inspection, attached documents, instruction manuals, safety training records, repair records, quotations, delivery slips, application forms, periodic inspections records, product catalogs, ledger management, etc. are managed on paper or on very old and expensive on-premise systems.
   
4. Sale/Disposal of Medical Devices
   Medical devices depreciate after about eight years from purchase and must be disposed for a fee. However, due to the lack of information on how to sell/dispose of medical devices and who to contact, as well as the time it takes, the remaining medical devices are taking up space in hospitals.

Considering these difficult situations, HITOTSU is trying to provide a cloud-based medical devices management SaaS to support the digital transformation.

The introduction of the product is expected to have the following benefits:

1. Selection of Medical Devices
   Effective collection of medical device information by putting information online.
   
2. Delivery of Medical Devices
   Reduction of ordering time and labor cost by digitalization.
   
3. Medical Device Management
   Utilization of medical device management data.
   
4. Sale/Disposal of Medical Devices
   Sustainable social implementation through sales proposals. The remaining usable life, inspection, and repair status can be monitored, and the sale/disposal of medical devices can be carried out smoothly since there's no need to contact vendors by phone.

Meet the founder of HITOTSU

Plug and Play is excited to partner with HITOTSU, which we believe will streamline the operations of hospitals and provide a better experience for both healthcare professionals and patients.