ClearCount Medical Solutions has tackled the pervasive problem of lost surgical sponges in the operating room with a breakthrough solution that’s improving patient outcomes and garnering praise both locally and nationally.

This month the world’s first radio-frequency-tagged surgical sponge was named one of the 100 Top Tech Innovations of 2009 by Popular Science Magazine. The SmartSponge System is the first and only one to incorporate the efficiency of safely counting, tracking and storing the whereabouts of the sponges using a sophisticated radio signal from a scanner wand, reversing the problem of an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 sponges left behind in patients during surgeries each year.

David Palmer, CEO of ClearCount Medical Solutions, also received the 2009 Carnegie Start-Up Entrepreneur Award for commercializing the SmartSponge System.

The SmartSponge received FDA clearance and hit the market in March of 2008. The system was first used in 2009, with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York among its first commercial customers.

The company has raised $11.4 million since inception, employs 21 full-time in Ross Township and plans to hire additional software engineers and technical service people in 2010.  While it’s still early in the game, projections call for double digit growth in 2009 and 2010 with revenues in 2010 well over $1 million.

“ClearCount couldn’t have achieved the success it has to-date without the support of our investors and Board of Directors, vision of our talented founders and engineers and hard work of our employees,” says David Palmer, president and CEO. “We are moving into an exciting phase in the company, in which we are able to see hospitals use the device and experience its benefits.”

The company also has plans to launch a lower cost alternative SmartWand-DTX system, a fully reusable, more economical, compact way to count, identify and validate sponge location during surgery.