Orion Innovations is a company that focuses on new and disruptive technologies that improve patient safety and improve the bottom line. Grounded in the principle that robust solutions can be simple to adopt, the company is dedicated to giving healthcare heroes and facilities new tools that are smart, simple to integrate and deliver the best possible patient outcomes. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Orion Innovations President & CEO Rodney Schutt to learn more about the company.
Rodney Schutt’s Background
What is Rodney Schutt’s background? Schutt said:
“Although I have been in healthcare for 38 years now, my career has taken some interesting twists and turns that have influenced both my work today and the mission of Orion Innovations. Originally, I had planned to become a doctor or a professional athlete, but that dream ended when I suffered a career-ending injury while playing Division 1 baseball as a pitcher. It was honestly the best thing that ever happened to me as the experience forced me to better understand the healthcare system at a young age, and it also fueled my passion for advancing new healthcare solutions and innovations.”
“Throughout my career, I’ve had the opportunity to lead six healthcare companies, one of them publicly traded. I was fortunate to start my career with GE Healthcare, which recruited me while I was still in college, and it gave me an opportunity to lead global customer care and serve in several executive roles as part of the senior leadership team. After that, I was able to explore orthopedics with Smith & Nephew Orthopedics, where I led two businesses, global commercial operations and later served in a business development role in Asia.”
“After working with some of the largest healthcare companies, I was drawn to the challenge of advancing new cutting-edge solutions. My first CEO job was at a post-startup called Luminetx, which developed a new vein visualization technology that is today a standard of care. I then took on CEO roles with several innovative companies, including Aspyra, a clinical software startup; then to Unitron and Widex, who are both developing hearing solutions; followed by the top position at HyperSound that is a pioneer in directed audio emitter technology.”
“In my current role as CEO of Orion Innovations, this mix of experience, along with my deep understanding and appreciation of the healthcare industry, has served me well. It has also given me an opportunity to lead a team of seasoned healthcare professionals, investors, and innovators who have the knowledge, energy, and relationships to deliver products that improve the patient and caregiver experience along with the bottom line.”
Inspiration For Orion Innovations
What was the inspiration for Orion Innovations, and how did the company come together? Schutt shared:
“Over the last three to four decades, we have lived through one of the most innovative technological explosions the world has ever seen. In medical technology, specifically, we have seen all kinds of technologies help physicians and clinicians, yet one of the highest mortality factors for Americans is medical error. When we were starting Orion Innovations, our focus was to find the unmet needs within healthcare where technology can play a powerful but simple role – especially when it comes to patient safety. In short, we want to answer a few key questions – ‘how can we help the healers heal’ and ‘how can we simplify the very complex environment of delivering healthcare?’ We think about the patients and clinicians simultaneously by trying to make a clinician’s life easier so they can provide world-class care and ensure patient safety.”
“Major medical advances like those in radiology or all the big iron tech deliver better patient outcomes and stronger bottom lines for healthcare companies. However, with all the advanced technology, we understand how it can be easy to gloss over the actual, everyday basics of providing high-volume, safe patient care. This is especially true today given the extreme nursing shortages and the razor-thin margins of hospitals – as a result, there is an urgent need for simple, low-cost innovations that could dramatically affect safety, minimize liability, and be simple to integrate as a standard of care. In some cases, there needs to be a new approach to manage better everyday practices like safe infusion management, basic dental procedures, and the like. These procedures may not involve big capital, but from a patient safety standpoint, they have as much life-saving impact as a 3T MRI, a linear accelerator, PET/CT scan or second reads through AI.”
“Another inspiration was Dr. Wayne Provost, one of the founders and inventors of MedLite ID, and our Chairman of the Board. His six decades of experiences and observations, including the 200+ patents he has to his name along with his own painful experience of watching his own son battle cancer – where he saw first-hand the potential for medical errors – brought his innovation to life.”
“That is why at Orion Innovations, we are committed to addressing unmet needs in healthcare and challenging the status quo in medical technology while ushering in new and higher-quality standards of patient care. From the very beginning, we envisioned ourselves as a platform company with a laser-focused strategy known as ICE (Incubate, Commercialize, Exit). We bring ideas and evolving technologies forward that are smart, simple, and patentable while targeting solutions that have a low regulatory threshold and allow for mass adoption and multiple returns on investment.”
“As of today, our current product portfolio includes the MedLite ID Smart-Lite solution for the acute healthcare market to prevent infusion Adverse Drug Events (ADEs), NoGag as a solution to dental procedures and patients impacted by the gag reflex, and OxySwitch as an oxygen switching device for the hospital reducing Time-Without-O2.”
Biggest Achievement
What has been the biggest achievement as a company so far? Schutt cited:
“This fall, we expanded our eight-time patented MedLite ID Smart-Lite system into our third major world region. MedLite ID is an innovative, simple, and disposable device that identifies and illuminates the Keep Vein Open (KVO) infusion line in seconds, which in turn helps to prevent hospital infusion line-tracing errors known as Adverse Drug Events (ADEs). Available through a variety of distribution partners in the United States, the European Union as well as the Middle East, MedLite ID is poised to significantly improve the levels of patient safety and risk reduction in hospitals worldwide.”
“We also reached an important milestone with our NoGag Solution – the 2,000th dental practice worldwide to adopt our five-time patented consumable powder, which is a unique mixture of salt and citric acid that begins working in only 10 seconds and eliminates the gag reflex from patients for a minimum of an hour. Available across the United States and the European Union – and with no contraindications for age and no allergens – the product has the potential to change the dental and medical fields forever for adults and children alike.”
“We have developed critical potentially lifesaving products, and we exist because there is a growing awareness and appreciation across the industry that smart, simple solutions can make day-to-day healthcare run more smoothly and confidently in a complex, acute care environment.”
Core Products
Can you give us more details on Orion Innovations’ core products and solutions? Schutt explained:
“We focus on advancing new and disruptive medical technologies that make smart, powerful solutions simple and improve patient safety for the highest-quality outcomes. As a healthcare technology platform company, we continually work to improve our products, processes, and tools for caregivers and facilities that are quite simple to adopt and improve patient outcomes. Our current line-up includes:
— MedLite ID Smart-Lite – This solution identifies and illuminates infusion lines in seconds, helping prevent life-threatening infusion Adverse Drug Events (ADEs). When a patient is receiving multiple IV infusions, the various tubes, bags, and pumps often become tangled, and it is difficult to quickly identify which line contains which drug, a phenomenon known as ‘spaghetti syndrome.’ With an average of eight IV lines per patient in the ICU, IVs and line tracing prior to injection are some of the highest-volume procedures in the hospital. Correspondingly, the risk for misidentified IV line ‘infusion confusion’ is high in today’s acute care settings since current methods, including tape and labels used for line identification, lack standardization, cannot be easily seen in low-light conditions, are time-intensive to apply, and are plagued by handwriting and poor adherence issues. Workforce-related challenges, including nurse shortages, traveling nurses, and commonly darkened rooms, have only increased risk. The scale of the issue is alarming: 56 percent of all ADEs are infusion-related, and 26 percent are life-threatening, with 15 percent of infusion ADEs being ‘wrong route errors’ whereby the correct drug is injected into the wrong line. Shockingly, for every IV line after the first one, a 3 percent compound error rate is present; with an average of 8 IV lines, this is a 21 percent error rate. With more patients and fewer nurses, compounded by the 19 percent nurse attrition in 2021 following COVID-19, line tracing needs to be faster and more effective. With 60-90 percent of all IV infusions in the United States containing one or more errors, healthcare providers are paying an average of $450,000 in avoidable direct ADE costs per year per 100 beds in the hospital.
— NoGag – Our oral care solution only takes seconds to eliminate the gag reflex and increase referrals, procedures, and patients. As many as eight percent of patients gag every time they are in the dentist’s chair – with 50 percent gagging at least once. As a result, these individuals have procedures fail or delayed, all while dealing with rising oral safety issues, costs, and pain. Three out of four U.S. adults experience some form of dental anxiety, leading them to avoid getting routine care, only coming to the dentist when problems have become too much to bear. Down the line, poor oral health can lead to heart attacks, strokes, and other cardiovascular problems. Sedation dentistry is often recommended for children and adults with prominent gag reflexes or dental anxiety – a practice that often comes with side effects like headaches, nausea, and grogginess. Enter our NoGag reflex elimination solution. The five-time patented consumable powder – a unique mixture of salt and citric acid – begins working in only ten seconds and eliminates the gag reflex from patients for a minimum of an hour. The smart, simple, and stress-free solution has been proven to eliminate the gag reflex, which in turn improves patient experience while enabling dentists to capture lost patients, procedures, and revenue in the process.
— OxySwitch – This solution, which is still in development, is a disposable oxygen valve that allows caregivers to switch seamlessly between oxygen delivery devices.”
Challenges Faced
What challenges have Schutt and the team faced in building the company? Schutt acknowledged:
“Making an entry into the acute healthcare market is always a challenge because the requirements are so high – from the FDA and a complicated regulatory landscape to peer-reviewed clinical studies and data publication. You must clear all the hurdles – even for a product or solution that is widely viewed as solving some decades-long problems. In this fast-moving industry, we are still bound to age-old methodical processes and boxes that need to be checked before you can have a successful rollout. And of course, during and post-pandemic, most of these advances slowed considerably.”
“At Orion Innovations, we have been able to overcome this challenge by focusing on building a portfolio of evolving technologies that are smart, simple, and patentable while targeting solutions that have a low regulatory threshold and allow for mass adoption and multiple returns on investment. We have also built an extensive network of distribution partners across the globe that are deploying our products, which are backed by clinical evidence and proven to reduce high-cost clinical errors through single-use, IP-protected solutions. As a result, our solutions are trusted by acute facilities, VA/DoD, dental offices, and air ambulance services around the globe.”
Evolution Of Orion Innovations’ Technology
How have your technologies and solutions evolved since launching Orion Innovations? Schutt noted:
“Orion Innovations is evolving through the technologies and solutions we are bringing into the marketplace. On the MedLite ID side, we’ve learned through the age-old best practice of listening by collecting Voice of Customer insights from nurses, department heads, and hospital leadership. Beyond identifying the Keep Vein Open (KVO) line, we learned specific alternative use cases ,such as how MedLite ID can be effective in the oncology space or be used to have the location of the MedLite ID devices communicate different drug classes. Our Gen 2 and Gen 3 products include enhanced interoperability features that will enable our MedLite ID solution to communicate with infusion pumps as part of a holistic patient safety system and integrate to the hospital’s EMR or the EHR. It is also worth noting that in healthcare markets around the world where simple gravity-fed bags are prominent, lacking sophisticated high-volume infusion pumps, MedLite ID has become a “pump lite” solution with sensor technology, which will warn the clinician if an infusion line concern is detected.”
Significant Milestones
What have been the company’s most significant milestones? Schutt highlighted:
“As mentioned earlier, we marked the market expansion for MedLite and celebrated our 2,000th dental practice to adopt the NoGag solution. But we have also seen interest in terms of potential investors and other folks who want us to commercialize. With NoGag, for instance, in less than six months from our soft launch in Europe, we have 15 European countries now utilizing the solution and we are moving into Southeast Asia and the Middle East.
Most recently, we achieved a significant evidence-based milestone for MedLite ID with a newly published peer-reviewed article in the Journal of Infusion Nursing (JIN). The article details a recent study conducted at Wake Forest University School of Medicine that found light-linking technologies, like MedLite ID Smart-Lite, are poised to contribute to improved patient safety and efficiency by reducing infusion line-tracing errors in critical care environments.
The research was conducted at the high-fidelity simulation suite at Wake Forest University School of Medicine with experienced intensive care unit (ICU) nurses. When compared to standard labeling practices, MedLite ID was 24 percent faster in accessing the primary medication line injection port and 40 percent less mental tasking as quantified within the study. The research also reinforced the device’s potential to prevent infusion errors — especially in low-light ICU conditions, where MedLite ID had zero errors compared to standard methods.”
Customer Success Stories
When asking Schutt about the company’s customer success stories, he spotlighted:
“For our MedLite solution, we have seen success in reaching VA and DoD healthcare facilities through our distribution relationship with Veterans Healthcare Supply Solutions (VHSS). VHSS is a veteran-driven medical product distribution company that represents manufacturers to federal government agencies, and it has played a critical role in increasing the availability of the MedLite system. In addition, as part of our work with VHSS, we sponsored a study at a Houston-based VA Hospital, which represents additional clinical evidence and support for MedLite ID.”
“The four-month study at the 500-patient-bed VA Hospital evaluated the level of improvement in the time to access a patient’s medication port – taking care to follow the INS requirements for the prevention of infusion ADEs. Conducted with a month of baseline standard of care, followed by three months of on-patient trial within three specialized intensive care departments, the results showed significant improvements in time to access the medication port when using MedLite ID compared to the standard of care.”
“Normalized for the number of lines per patient, MedLite ID Smart-Lites improved the time to injection readiness by over 400 percent. Standard of care took between 19 to 58 seconds to reach the port as compared to MedLite, which took only 1 to 7 seconds. Combined with the ability to use this in all lighting conditions, which creates a simplified method to meet the required mandate by the Infusion Nursing Society for line identification, MedLite ID has established itself as a patient safety solution demanded by nurses for its simplicity in application.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from the competition? Schutt affirmed:
“Our competition is really the status quo, including unmet healthcare needs and the process of doing things the same way over and over again. We look for these spaces where age-old problems persist and remain unsolved despite all our technological advances. We look for answers that we can protect by IP and have a low regulatory bar because it allows for mass adoption and globalization with limited barriers to entry. One of our guiding lights is we look for products and solutions that are smart, simple, and patentable.”
Future Goals
What are some of your future goals for Orion Innovations? Schutt pointed out:
“We’re continuing our unique business model or our ICE strategy – Incubate, Commercialize and Exit – for our investors and continue to develop smart, simple and powerful technologies and solutions under the Orion Innovations umbrella. We are constantly evaluating other companies, inventors, and solutions in the healthcare marketplace today that fit inside of that strategy.”
“Do they have IP, or can we quickly carve out some IP protection for them? Is there a low regulatory hurdle to help reduce barriers of entry into new markets? Do they already have a recurring revenue stream solution, and do they meet an unmet need? Are they relatively simple and smart? We are always in talks with CEOs and founders of these endeavors to understand what their thoughts and trajectory are and whether there’s a potential for collaboration in the future when the time is right.”
Additional Thoughts
Any other topics to discuss? Schutt concluded:
“To close where we started, speaking on behalf of my partners and colleagues at Orion Innovations – who have very extensive and successful careers in healthcare – we are driven by the meaningful work we do each day. We all want to leave a legacy of doing good, and I still personally have a lot of fire in the engine and gas in the tank to keep searching for a better way to deliver and contribute to patient care and safety while making a clinician’s life easier to deliver care.”
