Cost Efficiency

Invasive surgery can often result in hospital-acquired infections. Every surgical intervention into the body opens a primary entrance for germs. These infections prolong stays in hospitals, resulting in high follow-up costs. According to a study published in 2000, costs of 29 billion dollars were caused in US hospitals due to hospital-acquired infections³.

The use of non-invasive applications can counter this and help to increase cost-efficiency in hospitals. From a cost-related viewpoint, for example, non-invasive ventilation is preferable to invasive ventilation, where this is advisable from a medical point of view. Costs for a pneumonia patient using non-invasive ventilation in Europe are less than half those for a patient using intubated ventilation¹.

In addition, non-invasive ventilation can reduce occupancy times in expensive intensive care beds. This is because, for example, non-invasive procedures require a shorter weaning time from respiratory devices ⁶.Sophisticated systems support the patient's own ability to breathe and directly balance out deficiencies, in order to encourage free, independent breathing. The healing process is accelerated this way, and the workload of nursing staff is reduced thanks to a minimal risk of infection and the avoidance of follow-up treatment ^{4, 5}.

In the area of monitoring and screening, non-invasive applications have cost-related advantages compared to invasive procedures. In the case of non-invasive arterial blood pressure measurements or non-invasive jaundice measurements for newborns, for example, time and cost-intensive blood tests in laboratories can be avoided. The fact that nursing staff only require a short amount of training in order to use non-invasive monitoring and screening devices also helps to improve cost-efficiency. In addition, no consumables are used. This means that acquisition costs for non-invasive medical technology are written off significantly faster than those for invasive measurement devices.