The challenge

The step patients never see

01The steam routine

Six steps, by hand, between every patient

Every reusable instrument follows the same CDC process before it can touch the next patient.6

  1. Clean

    Ultrasonic bath with water and detergent

  2. Dry

    Fully dry before packing

  3. Package

    Each instrument sealed in its own pouch

  4. Label

    Load, date, sterilizer

  5. Sterilize

    Hours in steam for a full load

  6. Store and test

    Weekly spore tests

Waste: a single-use plastic pouch for every instrument, every cycle.

02The bottleneck

Productivity and cost

While the steam cycle runs, instruments are out of use. Clinics buy extra sets to cover the wait, and in hospitals the operating room waits too.

  • Hours

    for a fully loaded steam cycle with drying and cooling. Even a single pouch cycle takes about 52 minutes.7

  • ~10 min

    average operating room delay when instruments hold up a case. Over half of delayed cases were instrument-related.15

  • ~$370

    of idle operating room time per delay, at about $37 a minute.12

03The risk

Under pressure, mistakes reach patients

Sterilization is skilled, constant and safety-critical. When it slips, patients are exposed.

  • 78%

    of CDC investigations into dental outbreaks found lapses in instrument reprocessing.14

  • 1 in 4

    surgical cases in a 2024 hospital study had an instrument error from sterile processing.15

  • 1 in 38

    hospital patients has an infection caught during care, at about $20,785 per surgical site infection.3,4

04The alternative

The other option is a toxic gas

Much of what can't be steamed is shipped to industrial plants and sterilized with ethylene oxide, a known carcinogen.5

  • 20 billion

    devices a year are sterilized with ethylene oxide in the U.S.5

  • 90%+

    emissions cut now required of those plants by the EPA.5

  • $408M

    paid to settle lawsuits around a single plant.8

05The way forward

Fast enough to keep up. Thorough enough to trust. Safe for everyone.

That is what RadBox is built to do.