US 7,984,810 B2 · Recovery of reusable medical devices in a sharps container

Abstract

A recovery device and method of use to ensure that any reusable medical device that has been disposed of in a sharps container is recovered, cleaned, sterilized, and repackaged for reuse. In one embodiment, a sharps container and sorting surface are manipulated to rotate together and independently, so that the contents of the sharps container are emptied onto the sorting surface, enabling an operator to manually, safely, efficiently, and timely retrieve reusable medical devices from the sorting surface and place these medical devices into a receptacle bin. The non-reusable contents are subsequently dumped into a waste bin, whose contents will subsequently be incinerated or otherwise destroyed. The operator of the recovery device is protected by a shield and an exhaust system that minimize the operator's exposure to airborne biohazardous toxins and enable the sorting to be done without injury to the operator from sharp medical devices.

Claims23

Dependent claims

A recovery device for recovering substantially intact medical devices that can be processed for reuse from a sharps container, which includes other medical devices and medical waste materials that should be destroyed, comprising:

(a) mechanical manipulator means for engaging and manipulating sharps containers so as to enable safe access of unsterilized contents of the sharps containers by an operator of the manipulator means, even though the contents of the sharps container have not been sterilized when accessed by the operator;
and
(b) mechanical sorting means cooperating with the manipulator means for transferring the unsterilized contents of the sharps containers to the sorting means, and for enabling an operator to peruse and identify the unsterilized medical devices that can be processed substantially intact for reuse, for removal from the sorting means by the operator, to facilitate further processing of the substantially intact unsterilized medical devices selected from the sorting means by the operator, to enable their reuse.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Recovery of reusable medical devices in a sharps container

Life of this patent

Recovery of reusable medical devices in a sharps container

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims23