Equashield Honored as Winner in the 2016 Medical Design Excellence Awards

PORT WASHINGTON, New York, June 28, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Equashield, a leading provider of Closed System Transfer Devices (CSTDs) for safe and simple handling of hazardous drugs, today announced that the company's flagship EQUASHIELD product has been selected the Gold Winner of the General Hospital Devices and Therapeutic Products category of the 18^th Annual Medical Design Excellent Aware competition. The 2016 MDEA winning products were announced at the 2016 MDEA Ceremony held Tuesday, June 14, 2016, in conjunction with the MD&M East (http://www.MDMeast.com) event at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York.

The key innovations that differentiate EQUASHIELD from its competitors, include:

• Built-in pressure equalization within the syringe barrel, eliminating bulky exterior air chambers, a common design feature in most CSTDs on the market;
• Fully encapsulated and sealed syringe, preventing hazardous drug contamination from the back of the syringe, an often overlooked route of exposure common to standard plastic syringes used in competing systems;
• Dry connectors between the syringe, vials and IV bags, ensuring no drug residue escapes the system between transfers.

The Equashield product was recently tested against 5 other Closed Systems across multiple performance tests. The product design characteristics lead to the Equashield system having the best performance data amongst its peers.

The MDEA  are the medtech industry's premier design competition committed to searching worldwide for the highest caliber finished medical devices, products, systems, or packaging available on the market. The awards program celebrates the achievements of the medical device manufacturers, their suppliers, and the many people behind the scenes - engineers, scientists, designers, and clinicians - who are responsible for the cutting-edge products that are saving lives, improving patient healthcare, and transforming medtech - one innovation at a time.

"We are proud to be recognized as an MDEA Gold Winner this year. Each design decision we have made with EQUASHIELD focuses on the safety and ease-of-use for users. It is critical in this industry that all device makers place safety as the top priority in CSTD design," said Marino Kriheli, Co-Founder of Equashield. "This is not simply design innovation that results in an intuitive, well-made product. It is about protecting our healthcare workers from hazardous drug exposure to the highest standards."

The 2016 MDEA Juror Panel selected 38 exceptional finalists in 9 medical technology product categories. Products were judged based on design and engineering innovation; function and user-related innovation; patient benefits, business benefits; and overall benefit to the healthcare system. Unlike other design competitions that are merely styling contests, the MDEA jury is comprised of a balance of practicing doctors, nurses, and technicians alongside industrial engineers, manufacturers, and human factors experts.

About Equashield  

Equashield is a leading provider of Closed System Transfer Devices (CSTDs), clinically proven to protect healthcare professionals from hazardous drug exposure. Incorporating a pioneering design, the company's flagship device, EQUASHIELD^® II, covers more routes of exposure than alternative systems by preventing: contamination of syringe plungers, drug residuals on connector surfaces as well as exposure to drug vapor. Studies have shown Equashield's CSTD to be faster to deploy and easier to use than competing systems. The EQUASHIELD system has been cleared by the FDA under the ONB product code and substantiated in FDA-cleared labeling as preventing microbial ingress for up to seven days. 

For more information: http://www.equashield.com

About Medical Design Excellence Awards 

The MDEA program is presented by UBM Canon, the global advanced manufacturing and MedTech Authority, and by Medical Device and Diagnostic Industry (MD+DI), the industry's central source for late breaking news, information, and business intelligence. For more information about the Medical Design Excellence Awards - including additional details about the manufacturers and suppliers that created the 2016 MDEA-winning products - visit the MDEA website at http://www.MDEAwards.com or email: [email protected].

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SOURCE Equashield