The problem that started it all
Dr. Moishe Liberman, surgeon and Director of the Robotic, Endoscopic and Minimally Invasive Surgery Center at CHUM, had long witnessed the growing reliance on single-use medical supplies. Throughout his career, he saw not only the increasing waste from unused disposable products but also a shift in responsibility, where physicians like himself were expected to manage cost efficiency alongside patient care.
When Dr. Liberman and his leadership team sought a solution, they joined forces with an experienced software team Lisa Israelovitch, Thierry Wong, and Mundeep Minhas—leading to the creation of AssistIQ.
They realized this issue placed different and significant burdens on stakeholders across the healthcare system, ultimately pulling them away from their primary focus—delivering positive patient outcomes.
- Clinical teams struggled with faulty scanners linked to outdated ERPs, leading many to revert to manual entry or even scribbling supplies used during procedures on paper.
- Finance teams spent countless hours per case piecing together paper trails and unreliable data in an effort to reconcile charges.
- Supply chain teams operated in the dark, lacking visibility into actual usage and relying on inaccurate data for ordering.
These challenges were even more pronounced in Quebec due to the province’s ongoing rollout of the per-patient reimbursement model. Some hospitals reported product tracking rates as low as 50% or less.
Even when stakeholders at the CHUM wanted to optimize efficiency and reduce waste, they couldn’t because they lacked the data to pinpoint where to begin. Without awareness or the ability to educate themselves, no change could happen.
With the CHUM as their living lab, AssistIQ set out to prove a core principle: trusted data drives awareness, and awareness drives change.
Building the Solution: User-Centered Design and Continuous Learning
An initial MVP and study led by Dr. Liberman and the CHUM leadership demonstrated significant cost savings in thoracic surgery by giving surgeons real-time visibility into disposable instrument costs. This success led the CHUM’s leadership to greenlight an expanded collaboration with AssistIQ to develop a scalable solution.
When designing Version 1.0 the product, the AssistIQ team knew success depended on one critical factor: ease of use for the stakeholders at the point of capture—the clinical teams. The AssistIQ team immersed themselves in clinical workflows, gathering feedback from nurses and leaders across departments. The message was clear: the solution needed to be fast, hands-free, and seamlessly integrated into existing workflows. To achieve this, the team knew it needed to be powered by computer vision.
AIQ Capture was born.
However, the team quickly recognized that AIQ Capture would only be as effective as the data it used to identify products. To avoid the same issues that plagued barcode scanners—like outdated GTINs—AssistIQ needed to ensure AIQ Capture operated independently from the hospital’s manually updated supply databases. Training Capture to recognize virtually any product would require the power of AI and continuous machine learning.
Thus, AIQ Supply Cloud was born.
AIQ Capture: Building a Foundation of User-Centered Design
AIQ Capture was first implemented at the CHUM in July 2023 in thoracic surgery, leveraging an iPad app that required no specialized hardware. This followed an early prototype for the concept that was first introduced in June 2022. With the new AIQ Capture app, nurses simply waved a product under the camera, and in real time, product details were added to the procedure’s cart from the AIQ Supply Cloud.
Around the same time, AIQ Capture was also implemented in other departments: gynecology, colorectal surgery, plastic surgery, and Endoscopy. Initially, only one procedure from each department was chosen to test the AIQ Solution based on the cost value and volume of the procedures. However, the product quickly earned the respect and favor of the clinical teams they worked so hard to design for - it didn’t take long for the nurses to fully adopt the solution into their workflow and pressure the CHUM and AssistIQ to roll out the solution across all of their procedures.
Innovating at Speed: Fine-Tuning Solutions in the Living Lab and Training the AI Models
Each department came with its own unique challenges and use cases, putting AIQ Capture to the test. The living lab model allowed AssistIQ to adapt and iterate rapidly. For example, endoscopy procedures, known for their variability, fast pace, and low to no light environments, required rapid product recognition under different lighting conditions. Operating rooms are challenged by high variability in room set-up based on procedure type, high nurse turnover throughout the day, large volumes of disposables of all shapes and sizes being utilized in most cases as well as low to no light situations during minimally invasive and robotic surgery. AssistIQ adapted its computer vision to support these conditions, ensuring accurate identification even in green light.
With each use across the CHUM’s operating and procedure rooms, AIQ Capture became better, learning to recognize more products and at different angles and states. The platform now identifies over 4 million disposable product types, eliminating reliance on traditional tracking methods like barcodes or GTINs. It automatically recognizes over 98% of disposable medical devices in use, providing unparalleled accuracy and independence from outdated supply databases.
Turning Data into Action: AIQ Insights Drive Significant Savings
“Using AssistIQ has made me more mindful of product usage. I no longer open all disposables preemptively. …We have always known that there is a lot of waste in the OR but tracking the products made us more efficient and accountable” shared one OR nurse.
“Before AssistIQ, I had little understanding of product usage and waste within my department. Now, I have real-time visibility on cost and can see insights to improve our efficiency .” said one physician and department head.
By combining data from AIQ Capture with the CHUM’s physician preference cards and ordering data, AssistIQ surfaced actionable insights—highlighting patterns of over-ordering and unused supplies. Today, this product is called AIQ Insights.
The cumulative impact of post-procedure insights was monumental. The CHUM’s Innovation Department highlighted the results of a third-party evaluation in a recent case study: “After two years, we found that AssistIQ's technology enabled us to track inventory usage of single-use surgical instruments in real time, enabling us to plan purchases more effectively than with the traditional method. In fact, the results of the project showed a cost reduction of 24.5%. Extrapolating these data to the CHUM operating theater as a whole, annual savings of between $4,500,000 and $8,400,000 are possible.”
A Model for Healthcare Innovation
The partnership between AssistIQ and the CHUM demonstrates the power of the living lab model in healthcare innovation. By providing a real-world testing ground, the two teams accelerated the development of a solution that would typically face longer adoption timelines. Today, AssistIQ continues to refine its technology with the CHUM, pushing the boundaries of what is possible in healthcare efficiency and making data-driven change a reality.
To this day, the living lab partnership remains in effect, allowing for further innovation alongside clinical and supply chain teams.