Skytron, a company that delivers safety and efficiency in healthcare, is renowned for its innovative products. Their portfolio consists of surgical lighting, operating tables, sterile processing solutions, equipment booms, and video integration technologies.

According to Chris Irwin, the Senior Product Manager for Skytron’s Clinical Business Intelligence team, the key to pushing innovation boundaries is to foster a culture of innovation that includes everybody in the process.

"It really starts with leadership and having a team with a shared vision and direction,” he explains. “Being able to focus a research and development team on our specific business unit allows us to meet our roadmap objectives. It also expands beyond our internal team to our suppliers and manufacturing partners, all working collectively to attain the same goals."

“New product ideas come from many different areas – from our clinical business unit team meetings to broader multi-department team meetings, our distribution and supply channel partners, in-person and virtual customer discussions,” Chris says. 

Capturing customer input and feedback is a critical part of Skytron’s innovation process. “It can be collected via social media, email, phone calls, in-person meetings/studies, during the development process as part of the formative and summative study, pilot site activity, and customer engagement, virtual meetings, as well as challenges from existing products and trend analysis of product offerings,” Chris says.

“During the design process, the product requirements are written and reviewed and iterated with changes as necessary based on feedback. The development process has to be approved through a series of ‘gate reviews’ to ensure we are delivering to the design, are compliant to industry requirements of the product design, have all product supporting materials, and training defined. A final design transfer review is completed and approved prior to any product release and announcement of general availability.”

Chris’ Clinical Business Intelligence unit (which focuses on improving patient safety and efficiency in the operating room), aims to achieve five new developments or product improvements each year. “We are looking at launching two additional video integration platforms this year. Unfortunately, I am not able to share all of the roadmap technology we are working on, but it will be a game changer, as they say in the market, when we do release it!”

Of course, technology continues to evolve, particularly in the artificial intelligence space, which Skytron is at the forefront of. “AI is a big part of our roadmap and being able to provide meaningful data to health administrators for better decision making and transparency. We are also expanding our portfolio to further improve patient care with the use of AI.”

Skytron’s CEO, Dave Mehney, believes that “embracing change while staying focused on our core values and vision will continue to produce innovative solutions that drive safety and efficiency in healthcare.”

To find out more about our range of Skytron lights and pendants, please get in touch with our team.