Apparatus, system and methods for management of medical supplies

A system for managing surgical inventory in an operating room (OR) comprising:

• an imaging stand, to be positioned in or at the entrance to an operating room (OR), comprising a base receptacle on which to place surgical items, a post rising above the base receptacle, and a camera mounted at the top of the post, such that surgical items on the base receptacle are in the depth of field of the camera;
• and
• multiple processors and memory storage, the memory storage including instructions that when executed by the multiple processors implement steps comprising:
• acquiring an image, by the camera, of a surgical item placed on the base receptacle of the imaging stand;
• providing a notification at the imaging stand that the image is acquired;
• transmitting the image from the camera to a charge capture server including a recognition service and a search service;
• identifying in the image, by the recognition service, one or more recognition features of the surgical item by scanning for recognition feature types including printed text, a printed graphical image, a barcode, or a shape, and, in parallel, acquiring a new image, at the camera, of a new surgical item;
• searching, by the search service, one or more product databases for a match of a first recognition feature of the one or more recognition features, wherein the first recognition feature is of a first type, and, for no match of the recognition feature of the first type, searching for a match of one or more additional types of recognition features to determine, from the recognition features, an inventory identifier of the surgical item;
• upon successfully determining the inventory identifier, transmitting a message including the inventory identifier to a hospital inventory system to record use of the surgical item;
• and
• upon failing to determine an inventory identifier, transmitting the image to an application for manual identification of the surgical item.