Creche Innovations
Trailblazers in Medical Device Development

Since the turn of the century, technological advancements in the healthcare sector have unlocked a multitude of tech-driven applications to aid clinicians in better diagnosing, monitoring, and treating patients. However, as most of the emerging solutions are built with a ‘one-shoe-fits-all’ approach, hospitals and other patient care institutions struggle to align their tech-driven deployments based on their unique needs. On top of that, the recent widespread infectious disease, COVID-19 has pushed doctors and hospital administrators to develop newer and safer ways to ensure patient safety within their campuses. As a result, clinicians have been seeking avenues that can help them improve their healthcare facility’s efficiency and safety with proven medical equipment.

One company making great strides in the medical community through its innovative medical products is Kansas-based Creche Innovations. For over a decade, the company has been offering a wide range of highest quality products designed using best practices and principles from evidence-based research and clinical practice. “We work with clinicians and understand their most pressing issue, effectively customize offerings from our portfolio based on the need, and offer implementation support to help them mitigate their challenge and improve patient care workflows,” says Heather Fibuch-Townsend, RSMR, Vice President of Clinical Education and Healthcare Design at Creche Innovations.

Founded in 2006, Creche Innovations initially manufactured Penguin^® Nutritional Warmers—a product designed to correctly warm breast milk—and assisted clinicians in successfully feeding premature babies. Subsequently, the company moved beyond the newborn intensive care unit (NICU) nutritional warmers and expanded to start producing equipment for hospital-wide applications. Creche Innovations’ new primary product line comprises MicroCool^® refrigerators, freezers, procedure carts, alongside the ‘first-of-its-kind’ Rapid Response Unit (RRU^®), Covid-19 Mobile Command Center^™ and more.

Discussing the core competencies of Creche Innovations’ portfolio, Townsend elaborates, “Our MicroCool refrigerators have been in hospitals for over a decade now, and it is the most flexible, temperature-proficient, and quietest bedside refrigerator on the market.” The company also works with architects and medical planners to help hospitals accurately incorporate their MicroCool^® offerings directly into patient rooms. Creche Innovations also offers mobile refrigeration units across a plethora of equipment for use in NICUs, PICUs, OB Med- Surg, ER, OR, Orthopedic departments, and bedside custom furniture with built-in refrigerators for use across a patient care institution.

Alternatively, Creche Innovations has also developed a leading-edge RRU^®, a highly sought-after solution in the OB arena, as it aids nurses and OB specialists in responding and treating postpartum hemorrhages, which is a delivery complication that affects 700 women per year across the U.S. The company’s RRU^® comes with a digital readout scale—to quantify blood loss—and a built-in refrigerator unit and it is 100 percent customizable, allowing nurses to configure all the accessories based on their needs. With Creche Innovations’ RRU^®, nurses can cut down their response time by four and a half minutes and detect hemorrhages long before they spiral out of control. With such unmatched capabilities, the RRU^® has helped save the lives of mothers all around the world since its release. In one instance, the solution assisted a healthcare firm that delivered 2000 babies a year; significantly minimize their postpartum hemorrhage numbers. The RRU^® helps clinicians eliminate inefficiencies in their workflow, and has improved hospitals’ policies and procedures concerning the response toward postpartum hemorrhages. The RRU^® has helps clinicians weigh blood loss using the digital scale and monitor thus helping them recognize hemorrhage situations sooner and, thereby minimizing the number of severe hemorrhages by up to 75 percent.

Apart from its unparalleled portfolio of customizable solutions, Creche Innovations also provides webinars to help hospitals better handle delivery complications and premature newborns. Over the last three years, Townsend has authored and conducted three free webinar training courses to help clinicians improve the quality and standard of care when responding to postpartum hemorrhages. At the same time, Townsend has developed training regimes to spread awareness of how moving away from EBL and using Quantification of Blood Loss with every patient that delivers at their hospital can help the U.S. healthcare sector reduce maternal mortality rates. Townsend’s latest webinar release addresses latent threats and system issues in OB procedures through in-situ simulation.

According to Townsend, the core behind these webinars’ development is her first-hand experience with birth complications and importance of clinical training and education that her father instilled in each of the residents he trained for over 35 years at a leading hospital in Kansas City. “We all want the expert when our wife is labor, and clinicians cannot become the expert their patients need without practice,” mentions Townsend. Taking the insights from clinicians all over the world, Creche Innovations helps its clients recognize the inefficiencies that slow their workflows and provide the resources they need to overcome their hurdles. The company also uses its customer interactions to develop new educational material that helps its clients be prepared for similar future challenges. “We are also currently working with hospitals across the nation to help them answer questions with respect to their preparedness for another wave of COVID, another pandemic, and the changes required to boost their preparedness and are providing them an all in one solution with customizable options with our MicroCool^® Covid-19 Mobile^™ Command Center,” states Townsend.

Looking ahead, Creche Innovations aims to expand its operations in Europe and work with architects across the globe to develop new features and capabilities into their portfolio. In fact, the company has been working with Canadian hospitals for over a decade along with hospitals in Australia. Additionally, Townsend is planning to launch her fourth webinar—around Reducing PPH and Increasing Maternal Wellbeing in the Fourth Trimester—in late spring 2021. To conclude, Heather reiterates the ethos of Creche Innovations, “We will continue to develop highly customizable patient safety, emergency preparedness, and medical devices that mitigate the most prevalent challenges of our customers.”