Bait Partner: an integrated IT solution for hospital operating rooms

Bait Partner has developed the ORNet system to be used in operating rooms for documenting the course of the surgeries, managing all devices in the operating room on a central basis, and providing consultations and training online.

14 years ago, Bait Partner began its business activities as a provider of specific data security and audio video solutions. After several years in the business, the company decided to change course. For nearly seven years, the company has been active in the field of manufacturing medical devices and offering medical solutions.

“The product that we offer in the medical field is called ORNet,” says Inga Moreva, Member of the Management Board of Bait Partner. She explains that the ORNet product family currently includes three products: ORNet Surgery (a management solution for operating rooms), ORNet Pathology (a pathology imaging solution) and ORNet Capture (an imaging and documenting solution for smaller procedure rooms).

“Our vision is to provide solutions that can be used in various departments of a given hospital and thereby create an environment with unified procedures, functional data exchange and smooth documenting. Our solutions help doctors and other specialists communicate with each other quickly and efficiently,” Moreva says.

Based on the needs of medical specialists

According to Moreva, the product family was born from the fact that operating rooms needed an open system. “Our first cooperation partner was the hospital of Savonlinna. We began developing the product together with them. They had ten operating rooms, each equipped with different technology. Managing each device separately constituted a huge problem for them; the hospital personnel required ongoing training in order for everyone to be able to use devices in each room,” she describes.

This is what makes the ORNet product family special: it is an open solution, in other words, products from different manufacturers may be interlinked to a common system. “With us, it is easy: if you have our control panel, it doesn’t matter who has manufactured the particular devices. We create a net between the devices in the operating room. A single control panel allows for managing all the devices in the operating room – from tables and lamps to oxygen and temperature regulators.”

Moreva adds that the company also places value on technological solutions that simplify the user’s tasks and optimize the usage time of the operating room. For example, the solution provided by Bait Partner shuts off all the devices in the operating room simultaneously. This gains about five minutes at the end of each surgical procedure in the operating room.

Our vision is to improve the work organisation in hospitals

From the very beginning, the goal of Bait Partner has been to simplify the unavoidable procedures in hospitals and thereby improve their work organisation. In addition to managing devices in the operating room, the ORNet system also enables one to follow the situation in the operating room online: it is possible to store the incoming video and audio data, connect the data to the patient’s medical history, and to perform consultations and training online.

“We are without doubt one of the very few companies who have developed a fit-for-use solution to integrate their products into the existing patient registers, be they data registers or image archives maintained by the hospitals. We are able to route the material generated with our devices directly to these archives without any intermediate processes. This ensures that our tools make the personnel’s work easier, faster, and more convenient on an everyday level,” Moreva says.

According to Moreva, the company’s solutions are extremely flexible because they have been developed so that the systems may be extended and shaped according to the needs and ambitions of any particular hospital.

She says that the company has established a custom of asking feedback from customers regarding the ORNet services on an annual basis. “Each year, there is more feedback and it is better,” she rejoices, adding that the clients have said that they would never give up the company’s solutions. “This means that they have become used to our solution and that it increases the efficiency and safety of their everyday life.”

A recognized medical solution

Moreva is proud that ORNet is now a certified medical solution. The certification process has been their greatest challenge this far. “The completion of all the procedures necessary for being recognized as an official medical device on the market took several years. The design and development of a solution is not always that hard, but if you want a product to qualify as a medical solution, you require extended competence.”

The ORNet product family is being developed by a team of ten specialists, each of them having a particular role and purpose in maintaining and developing the solution and generating future possibilities. The outlook of the company is ambitious. The company is currently the market leader in Finland and provides services in several Finnish hospitals. The process of establishing the business in the Baltics is underway. Currently, our main goal is to conquer the other Nordic markets as well.

Moreva says that the Connected Health Cluster provides a good opportunity to gather information and get assurance that the company is on the right track and the team’s mindset is correct. She praised the cluster by adding: “It is also great to hear the views of medical visionaries and state representatives regarding the potential and necessary development of the field of medicine, and to see how it fits in with our business.”