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December 06, 2021 | Tom Ballard

DARVIS growing in Nashville, holds open house and announces new partnership

By Tom Ballard, Chief Alliance Officer, PYA

Just two days ahead of another open house at its new and enhanced Nashville headquarters in Metro Center, DARVIS Inc. announced a major partnership with Surgio Health of Scottsdale, AZ to create innovative instrument tracking and optimization solutions utilizing optical recognition and machine learning technology.

We had the opportunity late last week to talk with DARVIS Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer Jan Schlueter about the latest announcement that combines the expertise of his company, described in this news release as “a pioneer in the digitization of hospital logistics, hygiene, and process documentation through AI (artificial intelligence) technology,” and Surgio, a surgical instrument management technology partner for healthcare facilities and medical device manufacturers.

Working together, the two companies are focused on eliminating patient safety risks and unnecessary processing costs related to sterilization, while simplifying process and workflow for hospitals and their staff. They plan to release their first partnership solution in 2022, drawing on their respective software platforms.

  • DARVIS describes itself as a Productivity-as-a-Service (PaaS) solution that digitizes objects and processes through AI-powered computer vision technology, enabling it to provide real-time analysis of environments and situations.
  • Surgio Health is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform that provides fully integrated digital transformation of surgical asset management and optimization for the operating room and sterile processing department.

“We know exactly what is where at any given time,” Schlueter says. “We know where the cart and surgery kit are before use. We can tell if everything is in the kit, so we can avoid failures. We (also) know that up to 60 percent of the instruments in a tray are not being used.”

The cost and efficiency benefits can be significant.

“This (technology) is a lot more accurate that RFID (radio-frequency identification),” says Woody Bibb, DARVIS’ Vice President of Strategic Partnerships and Business Development. “It augments any technology they (hospitals) are currently using.”

As noted in this June 2021 teknovation.biz article, the company relocated its headquarters to Nashville from San Francisco in large measure due to its work with the Nashville Entrepreneur Center as well as the vibrancy of the healthcare start-up sector in the community. DARVIS, which is an acronym for Data Analytics Real World Visual Intelligent System, was co-founded in Germany by Schlueter and Jan-Phillip Mohr in 2015.

Two early applications are the company’s Bed Tracking System (see photo at left), which is described as 20 times more accurate than RFID, and Rapid Hygiene Check, an infection-control compliance model that ensures that healthcare workers are wearing personal protective equipment and complying with hygiene protocols.

With 12 employees in Nashville, Bibb adds that healthcare is not the only focus of DARVIS. “We see opportunities in warehousing and logistics,” he says.


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