"We just scan our gowns during the week when we can."
It's something we hear a lot. And it sounds reasonable — until you actually add up what it costs.
Here's what "scanning it ourselves" really means:
You're using a patient imaging room and a very expensive piece of equipment — one that can't image patients while it's being used to check gowns, and one that racks up wear and tear from the sheer volume being screened.
Then you're using your most precious and rarest resource: your staff. Someone qualified has to scan every single gown, wearing a lead gown of their own, and taking on additional radiation exposure to do it.
And then there's time. Properly screening a gown — imaging it, measuring any defects, documenting everything — takes 5 to 10 minutes per item. For 200 items, that's roughly 26 hours.
26 hours is a lot to give up.
That's the equivalent of 70–100 patient exams you could have run instead
26 hours of highly trained staff time — sometimes at overtime rates
26 hours of equipment wear
26 hours of staff standing in front of a fluoroscopy system, unnecessarily
And at the end of it, best case, you'll pick up the major cracks, holes and cosmetic defects — written up and entered manually into a spreadsheet or database, assuming nothing was missed.
But here's the part traditional screening can't see at all.
Lead and lead-free gowns don't just develop visible damage. They thin. Silently, invisibly, and increasingly with use. Well-adopted standards say an 11mm² defect on the front of a gown or thyroid collar is enough to pull it from service — but lead thinning in these same areas reduces protection exponentially, and no amount of manual inspection will catch it.
Your team could pass a gown as "fine" and still have no idea it's offering a fraction of the protection it should.
This is exactly what FlowD was built to fix.
A standalone, portable system — set up anywhere, so your imaging rooms stay free for patients
Fully staffed and operated by us, so your radiographers stay focused on their actual work
Screening completed in up to half the time of traditional methods, so gowns are back in service faster
A complete data set, imaging and report for every single item, ready for your review
Detection of lead thinning — a level of visibility into gown safety that manual screening simply cannot offer
At the end of the day, FlowD gives you a full, accurate picture of your inventory — so you can make informed decisions on quality and replacement, protect your staff, and get your time and rooms back where they belong: with patients.
Curious what FlowD could uncover in your own inventory? Let's talk.
