Pumoli Malapati has always been interested in the sustainability of health care.
Malapati, a University of Virginia graduate, is especially focused on the importance of implementing green operating rooms, which is why she helped create Charlottesville-based startup PeriOp Green.
PeriOp Green, co-founded earlier this year by Malapati, Nafisa Alamgir, Tyler Chafitz and Dr. Matthew Meyer, is a software-as-a-service product that helps minimize perioperative waste using advanced analytics.
“Our overall goal is to improve healthcare efficiency, lower healthcare costs and reduce healthcare wastes,” Malapati said.
Citing single-use, sterile surgical supplies as an example of where waste can occur, she explained that these supplies are often opened on the scrub table in the event they’re needed during an emergency. Many times, however, the tools are not used and must be thrown away, leading to expensive waste.
“The main goal of our product is to provide data to show how often specific items are opened but not used,” Malapati said. “We’re not saying don’t keep it out there; we’re just saying, don’t open it.”
PeriOp Green was one of nine startups to participated in UVA’s 2021 summer startup incubator, hosted by the Batten Institute at the Darden School of Business, and led by Jason Brewster, director of the summer incubator.
The cohort experienced an updated, new model of the program called Venturing Project Squared to better propel the startups to success. Malapati said the university has played a big role in helping to launch and sustain PeriOp Green.
PeriOp Green offers this insight by utilizing a camera that is positioned above the scrub table and machine learning technology to detect used and unused single-use supplies. The information can help perioperative administrators make more informed decisions about surgical supply usage.
The idea for PeriOp Green was sparked, in-part, through Malapati’s work at the UVA Office for Sustainability when she was a student. During that time, she, Alamgir and Chafitz connected with with Meyer.
As an anesthesiologist and proponent of reducing waste to mitigate its impact, Meyer said he supports PeriOp Green’s purpose to improve the environmental footprint of the OR.
“It became fairly clear that the best way to do this is to reduce usage rather than to make something that is more recyclable, because recycling out of the operating room is not an easy feat,” he said.
The team’s hope is to continue its work and transform the future of health care by demonstrating that sustainability is not only good medicine, but also good business.
“Sustainability is really conservation of resources. (It) does not add cost; it actually saves costs because we’re conserving resources and becoming more efficient,” Meyer said.