Listening to clinicians: Medical and dental innovations that share the same spark
From securing nasogastric tubes to simplifying dental procedures, Solventum’s approach is to make workflows easier for clinicians and help them care for their patients.
Kimberly Schommer, a product development specialist at Solventum, formerly 3M Health Care, and a registered nurse for more than 18 years, has experience with the challenges of nasogastric tubes. These tubes, used when a patient needs a tube placed through their nose to their stomach, were falling out, constantly needed to be replaced and, most concerningly, often caused pressure injuries. They posed serious risks to patients, and cost nurses and doctors precious time and resources they couldn’t afford to spare.
After an intensive three-year process of development, pulling in specialists across Solventum’s vast network of more than 22,000 researchers, scientists and engineers, the Solventum team, including Schommer, launched the 3M™ Nasogastric Securement Device. It was a solution to every problem clinicians had told Schommer about — one that keeps nasogastric tubes secure.
“First, we understand the customer’s needs – and then create products that address our customers’ problems to make their lives easier and the clinical outcomes better.”
— Kim Schommer, Application Engineer, Solventum
“It’s a simple device that’s making a big impact,” Schommer said. “Nurses went from having to change this device every 12 hours to, now, only changing it anywhere from two to five days. We have one facility that had roughly three to four pressure injuries a month. They have not had one since they converted to our product almost a year ago. It’s a huge deal.”
Throughout their development process, the Solventum team constantly sought input from clinicians on the ground, who were instrumental in shaping the final product. The clinicians had a seemingly simple request that had major implications: making the device clear. Existing products on the market had always been tan or white, making them impossible to see through. Creating a product that was transparent, nurses explained, would allow them to see whether pressure injuries were developing on patients’ skin — and, crucially, allow patients to actually see themselves in the mirror.
Schommer and her colleagues delivered. The impact that’s had on patients, she said, has been invaluable.
Kim Schommer, Application Engineer, Solventum
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“Sometimes, patients can become unrecognizable when they’re in the hospital, with all of the tubes and drains and things that are attached to them,” Schommer said. “It sounds really simple, but having something stuck to them that is not white or brown, where they can see their face, and they can sort of see the human underneath all of this, has been huge for patients and families.”
From start to finish, Schommer and her colleagues kept in constant conversation with nurses and doctors in the field, making their feedback, and their needs, central to the product they were developing. That’s a hallmark of how Solventum approaches all of its product development, according to Dr. Andreas Syrek, Solventum’s Global Medical Director and Chief Dental Officer.
“It always starts with really listening to the customer,” Andreas said. “First, we understand the customer’s needs, realize what their issues are and what their problems are — and then create products that address our customers’ problems to make their lives easier and the clinical outcomes better.”
“That’s the promise at Solventum: We never stop solving for you. We listen to a patient; we solve the needs.”
— Dr. Andreas Syrek, Global Medical Director and Chief Dental Officer, Solventum
Solventum brought that same approach to an issue faced by dental offices around the world. Every time a dentist needs to bond an indirect restoration — whether it’s a crown, a bridge, a veneer or beyond — they have to use multiple resin cements to handle that task. Historically, the average dental office has had five different resin cements and corresponding adhesives and primers on stock, according to Dr. Syrek. And that’s been a huge problem for clinicians.
“First of all, you need to train your staff on these different resin cement systems,” Dr. Syrek said. “Secondly, if you have that many, obviously, you have potential for mistakes. And thirdly, you generate a ton of waste. If you could just go for one, you reduce the amount of expired products, and it simplifies your life.”
After shadowing and interviewing countless dentists in the field, the dental research and development team at Solventum used their input to create a revolutionary product: the 3M™ RelyX™ Universal Resin Cement and Automix Syringe. It’s a one-stop shop for dentists, allowing them to use a single resin cement for almost any restoration, making their work safer, more efficient and more effective. Crucially, it’s also better for the environment.
“You achieve about 80 percent less cement waste compared to other products on the market,” Dr. Syrek said. “These syringes are usually bulky, but this is a really tiny product — which means you also have about 50 percent less plastic waste. It’s also a BPA derivative free formulation. So for the environmental footprint that we leave, it’s phenomenal.”
Like Schommer, Dr. Syrek and his team centered input from practicing clinicians during development, striving to solve every problem they articulated when it came to resin cements — and beyond.
“It all came from the complexity of a cementation in the dental procedure,” Dr. Syrek said. “And then we really thought about, what can we solve in addition? It’s what we would call the unarticulated needs of the customer.”
For Solventum, that meant creating a resin that wasn’t just time- and cost-efficient, but was easy to clean, minimizing the risk of leaving excess cement in the sulcus, a primary cause of dental complications in these procedures. Like Schommer, he and his colleagues were dedicated, he said, to creating a product that went above and beyond — working directly with clinicians to make their lives easier and improve outcomes for patients.
Dr. Andreas Syrek, Global Medical Director and Chief Dental Officer, Solventum
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“We never stop solving for you,” Dr. Syrek said. “That’s kind of the mantra, the mission at Solventum: we never stop solving. If we develop a new product, we listen to a customer, we solve the needs. Plus, we think to the next step ahead: What might be the unarticulated needs? And we tackle those as well.”
Solventum is passionate about patient-focused solutions.