Why QA/QI Matters in Medical Devices: A Physician’s Perspective from the Front Lines

Written by: Andrew Napier, MD FAAEM

Before I cared about airway, I cared about image quality.

When I first got serious about emergency medicine, it wasn’t airway that pulled me in, it was ultrasound. I was a med student grinding through rotations, trying to figure out where I fit. But it wasn’t until I landed an EM rotation at Yale that I saw what real clinical feedback looked like.

Every Friday, I’d sit with the ultrasound director and go through scan after scan. No fluff. Just a straight-up breakdown of what I saw, what I missed, and how I could get better. The residents were expected to do it every week. No excuses. That process, reviewing your own work with someone who knows what they’re doing, completely changed how I thought about training. I stopped guessing. I started improving. Fast. Because when you’re forced to look at your own work under a microscope, you either get better or you don’t belong. That was my first real taste of how powerful structured review can be.

Ultrasound Was Just the Start

That stuck with me. When I got to residency, I kept doing it. I reviewed every ultrasound I did. Not just to confirm the diagnosis, but to critique my own technique. I watched every clip like game film. Was I off-axis? Was I too shallow? Did I waste time fumbling for the view? It wasn’t about checking a box. It was about tightening up my performance. I got so deep into it that I ended up self-publishing a book on ultrasound just to lay out how to review images and get better. It was never about the tech, it was about the reps and the feedback.

And then I started asking the same questions about airway. We were using video laryngoscopes more and more. Everyone was talking about difficult airways, bad views, failed attempts, bloody cords, multiple passes. But unless you were standing in the room at the time, it was all just secondhand stories. There was no footage. No way to confirm what really happened. No way to coach someone through it after the fact. It was all anecdotal. And that was the bottleneck. We had the tools, but not the system.

Airway QA Still Has a Blind Spot

Let’s be honest, QA and QI in airway management is still behind. You get a case note that says “two attempts” or “difficult view” and that’s it. No context. No video. You don’t know if the blade was too deep, the angle was off, or the tube just bounced off the cords. And you definitely don’t know how to help that clinician get better unless you saw it happen. That kind of feedback vacuum doesn’t exist in any other high-performance field. Pilots don’t fly blind. Athletes don’t train without film. But in medicine, especially in emergency and prehospital care, we’re still relying on post-event narratives and documentation summaries to make sense of what actually happened.

That’s not just a training issue. It’s a systems issue. If you can’t review what happened, you can’t teach. You can’t course-correct. And you can’t grow. That’s true whether you’re in a trauma bay, on a flight crew, or in a residency program. These are high-stakes procedures with real consequences. And the only way to get better is to build a feedback loop that actually works.

Why We Built IntuBlade

That’s why I built IntuBlade. It wasn’t just about designing a better scope. It was about designing a smarter system. Something that didn’t just work in the moment but made you better after. We built it to connect directly to your phone or tablet. No extra monitors. No clunky gear. Just plug it in, open the app, and start recording. Everything gets saved. You can watch it right after the case. You can review it later with your team. You can use it to coach a junior medic who needs real feedback instead of just guesswork.

It’s not about being flashy. It’s about being functional. That feedback loop turns a single procedure into a repeatable learning moment. It gives you eyes on the entire attempt, from blade entry to tube placement. You see what went right. You see what went wrong. And you actually have something you can build on. That’s the difference between checking a box and actually training.

The System Behind the Scope

But we didn’t stop there. The real problem isn’t just capturing the video, it’s reviewing it at scale. So we’ve been building a full QA/QI platform behind the scenes. A backend system that lets you sort, tag, and review cases. You can pull up videos by provider, date, location, or clinical detail. You can flag key moments. You can build libraries for training. You can show a resident exactly what happened during their attempt and walk them through it. Not three weeks later. That same shift. That same day.

This isn’t built for hospital IT. It’s built for real-world directors and educators. It runs fast, stays lean, and gives you exactly what you need to keep your people sharp. We’re not releasing it publicly yet. Still testing, still refining. But the point is this, if you’re running a prehospital system, a residency, a critical care unit, or anything where airway matters, you shouldn’t be guessing. You should be watching. You should be teaching. And you should be improving with every case.

The Future Is Video

Airway training is changing whether you like it or not. You can’t just hand someone a scope, let them practice on a mannequin, and hope they figure it out in a live code. That’s not how any of us got good. The future isn’t more slideshows. It’s video. It’s review. It’s watching yourself in action and knowing exactly where to tighten things up. And the faster that review happens, the faster you improve.

Same thing for QA. It’s not about filling out forms. It’s about seeing what actually happened and having the ability to do something with it. It’s not extra work. It’s the kind of work that saves time and builds real competency. That’s why we built IntuBlade to run simple. Plug it in. Hit record. Review the tape. That’s how teams get better.

Watch the Tape

You don’t get better by guessing. You get better by watching what happened, owning it, and adjusting the next time around. That’s how I got better at ultrasound. That’s how I want every clinician handling airways to get better too.

This is why I built IntuBlade. Not just for clearer views in the moment but for clearer insight afterward. The gear matters. But the process is what actually changes outcomes. You want to build a team that performs when it counts? Start by watching the tape. That’s where the real progress happens.