A UVa Startup with Machine-Learning Inventory Management Aims to Reduce Medical Waste

For our Startup Spotlights, Times of Entrepreneurship scouted the most successful startups that spun out of top university competitions and programs. The impact of such awards can be many years in the making, especially in the DeepTech space.

Name: PeriOp Green

Interviewee: Matthew Meyer, MD, Co-founder

Which university challenge did you win and when? Or how are you affiliated to a university?

PeriOp Green’s team is strongly connected to the University of Virginia. Our co-founders are current and former students and one is an assistant professor. The first competition that we won was the UVA Entrepreneurship Cup: Concept Stage; and we were also competitively selected for innovation labs at the Batten Institute of the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia. We also participated in [email protected] through the University of Virginia and Virginia Tech.

What is your elevator pitch? Has it changed much since you started?

The only acceptable healthcare waste is the least waste possible. We believe in high-value perioperative care with an initial focus on reducing intraoperative waste of sterile surgical supplies–saving hospitals money and preventing tons of garbage. Our SaaS product uses computer vision to identify unnecessarily wasted sterile surgical supplies. Over time, our machine learning algorithm suggests adjustments to the sterile surgical supplies opened during surgeries with a focus on minimizing waste, maximizing cost-reduction and minimizing clinical impact. PeriOp Green proves sustainable healthcare is cost-effective healthcare. 

The heart of our pitch, a focus on intraoperative reduction of unnecessary sterile surgical supply waste, has been consistent since the beginning. We have identified a real problem: far too many items are unnecessarily wasted in the OR. However, the delivery of the pitch itself is constantly refined as we receive feedback from stakeholders. Our goal with every pitch and every revision is to describe PeriOp Green as thoroughly and effectively as possible.

What should we know about you?

PeriOp Green is at the forefront of the sustainable healthcare movement. We are adapting innovative inventory technologies to sterile supplies in the perioperative space. Our mission is operationalizing sustainable healthcare, and the by-product is going to be financial-savings for hospitals (purchasing-less, trashing-less, storing-less, handling-less). 

What are you looking for?

We are looking to become stronger in two facets: 1) perioperative supply and instrument industry, and 2) robotics and computer vision. Anyone with experience in either of those fields, who is interested in making healthcare more efficient and more sustainable, we want them to be part of our team. 

Why should someone invest in you?

PeriOp Green is addressing the multi-billion dollar problem of perioperative waste. We are creating a solution that has been needed for decades, but is just now technically feasible. Health systems and surgeons love efficiency and have been working for years to improve the marginal costs of the OR. Now, with a new national and international focus on sustainable healthcare, we are offering the opportunity for health systems to generate less perioperative waste and create a sustainable health reputation while saving money and having long-term, reliable data on actual supply usage. 

How much total funding have you raised and from which sources?

We have received some non-dilutive funding and in-kind support from the innovation lab VP(x)2  but we are otherwise entirely bootstrapped.

How many employees do you have?

We are four co-founders with a small team of ML/CV developers who are passionate about making technology work to improve healthcare and the world. PeriOp Green is unique because of our team and our culture. 

What has surprised you the most after starting this?

One of the most surprising aspects to this venture has been the amount of people, whether they work in clinical medicine, healthcare administration or even computer science, that share our passion to reduce perioperative waste. We place this ethos at the forefront of recruitment for team members and partner organizations.  As evidence, the academic research team affiliated with PeriOp Green surveyed over 200 surgeons, and 95% of them said they would be willing to change their OR workflow if it meant reducing waste. Their manuscript will be published in Surgery.