From alert to action: Streamline medical equipment recall management with Slack

In March 2024, medical technology company Medtronic recalled more than 45,000 of its life-saving medical tubes that drain brain-spinal fluid from patients who have undergone heart surgery. The recall sent shockwaves through the healthcare and medical supply-chain community.

Critical questions were raised about the health and safety of the patients who have used these devices. And for medical technology and healthcare professionals, it presented real-time process and communication challenges, demanding timely information and expedited responses. Key among them:

How quickly could devices be identified and withdrawn from the supply chain?

How could professionals thrust into the middle of a medical product recall educate themselves and react quickly in ways that are helpful, informative, updated, private, secure, and shielded as much as possible from leaks, liability and litigation?

The recall of the Medtronic devices by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) represents a prime example of a medical product crisis that forces timely understanding, communication, coordination and response.

Slack emerges as an ideal AI-powered communication platform for healthcare professionals, physicians, medical equipment manufacturers, supply-chain workers and others involved who need real-time access to secure information and data that is likely to change quickly and evolve over time.

Supercharge collaborative decision-making in Slack

With Slack, stakeholders can facilitate a smooth and efficient recall communication process by connecting everyone—internal and external—involved in information gathering and data tracking. Slack enables the collaboration, information sharing and decision-making necessary for timely, well-informed response plans. Additionally, to ensure that decisions and actions are based on real-time information, it supports sharing of data and files from multiple applications among all team members.

Slack Connect in particular allows users to create secure channels with up to 250 external organizations, and while it doesn’t replace required recall communication and documentation protocols, it does provide a communications hub where always-evolving information can be shared at the right time with the right people, including:

• Hospitals and healthcare professionals/physicians whose patients are affected by product recalls
• Medical suppliers and supply-chain representatives
• Product manufacturers/manufacturer representatives
• Patient representatives
• Regulatory agencies

Other Slack features, including huddles and Workflow Builder, ensure that all team members can share critical information in a timely manner.

During a communications crisis such as a medical recall time is of the essence. Decisions need to be made quickly and waiting for email responses or a scheduled meeting may burn too much precious time. That’s where huddles come in, giving everyone in a channel the ability to hop on a call, share their screen and talk in real time, enabling faster decision-making.

With Workflow Builder, automation is used to kick efficiency up a notch. Easy-to-use drag-and-drop features build automated processes to ensure that the team can get more done, faster, all while maintaining a high level of organization needed during high-pressure moments.

In fact, healthcare and life science customers on average see 31% faster decision making and 32% time savings due to automation.

Additionally, Slack’s ability to integrate with over 2,700 apps in seconds links all team members with tools and information they need in a single source—a far better scenario than sorting through dozens or hundreds of disparate email chains, text messages, clinician data, clinical notes, federal agency updates/alerts and other sources.

Benefits for a range of involved recall entities

During a medical product recall, there are many involved parties, and Slack is a tool that works for all.

Hospitals and healthcare professionals, for example, can collaborate to develop timely, well-informed response protocols for their peers and for affected patients, offering reassurance that all necessary actions are being taken to protect their safety and health.

Medical product suppliers and supply-chain partners can share and respond to ever-changing data points as the recall progresses, respond to internal and external requests for status updates, and rely on timely data to manage notification and outreach to affected customers and partners. Slack’s canvas feature, for example, allows users to create and store fully formatted content in any form including documents, reports from other applications, and even workflows—a quasi-library accessible to all channel members for real-time updates and easy distribution.

And don’t forget AI for real-time health insights

The incorporation of AI capabilities across conversational data supports additional insights, uninhibited idea swarming, and moments of clarity and action.

Teams can consider deploying AI to identify trends or topics that have been overlooked in the flurry of the product recall, spot opportunities for deeper exploration or follow-up, and offer insights based on best practices from previous recalls or supply-chain challenges. Slack AI creates channel and thread summaries that let anyone joining an existing recall channel get up to speed in seconds instead of reading through hundreds of messages. 

Check our website for a deeper dive into Slack capabilities for security and AI integration.

Plan ahead and react quickly

Medical product and healthcare professionals who are already using Slack as a collaborative tool can keep track of ongoing governmental and regulatory actions and legislative changes in real time. This ensures that they can plan ahead and, when a recall or crisis situation arises,  respond accordingly.

In short, Slack supports accuracy, collaboration, informed decision-making, data analysis, and real-time input and outreach during a medical product recall—and it does so in a way that provides reassuring security to all stakeholders and parties involved.

Learn more about Slack’s role in managing and customizing your recall-related communications plan.