Steven Jaworski is a biomedical technician at Brookhaven Memorial Hospital Medical Center in Patchogue, NY. As Blake Eskin of the official MakerBot blog reports, Jaworski does everything from outfit Brookhaven’s new cardiac health lab to replacing critical ER cables.
“Those cables are essential, since they set off an alarm when your heart races or your blood pressure plummets,” Eskin explained.
“They are also expensive: $294.85 for a set of three, which adds up. If you had to replace cables once a year for each of the 315 beds at Brookhaven Memorial Hospital Medical Center in Patchogue, NY, it would cost $92,877.75.”
Jaworski says he had to replace so many cables that he ended up ordering cable tethers from a medical supplier for $24.50 per cable, or $73.50 for a set of three. Unfortunately, surgical scissors are able to easily cut through the tethers – forcing the hospital to step up its purchases of additional tethers.
That is, until Jaworski asked for an MakerBot Replicator 2 Desktop 3D Printer to solve his cable problem. Using the Atmel-powered platform, the technician designed a tamperproof cable tether with a dense black PLA and thick wire. The total cost? $7.94 for a tether that holds three cables. Simply put, Jaworski’s cable tethers saved Brookhaven Hospital a grand total of $60,000 in three months.
According to Jaworski, the best thing about having a MakerBot Replicator 2 is its versatility.
“It’s not a Phillips-head screwdriver when you need a flathead. It’s basically a solution that has paid for itself many times over… You don’t know when you’re going use it, you don’t know what you’re going to use it for, but you’re always going to need it,” he added.
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