Making Healthcare Safer Since January 6, 1986

40 years ago today, on the 6th January 1986, I put a foundation stone into the business that is today Sharpsmart – catapulting me into a journey that has tested my resolve more times than I can count, challenged and stretched my ability and my leadership in seasons of famine and harvest, demanded continuity and faith in a higher vision even when the road ahead was masked, and yet on the converse – enriched my life so completely with the people who have shared this journey, the successes we have achieved together, and the transformative impact we have made on healthcare safety around the world.

The number 40 is significant in biblical accounts, but also in the way we bracket significant periods of our life. In the Bible, this period of time was symbolic of testing and trial, as well as of preparation and new beginnings. Such is characterised in the stories of the Israelites wandering for 40 years, Jesus fasting for 40 days and nights, Moses spending 40 years in the wilderness, the rains of the great flood falling for 40 days and nights, and in the life of the kings of old, this four-decade milestone often represents the passing of one generation to another.

From our birth, this number is instilled in two very pivotal times in our life – firstly the forty days of gestation period for a foetus developing in a womb, and secondly the day we enter into our fifth decade and confront the commonly held belief that “Life Begins at 40”; characterising a shift in how we perceive success, personal imperatives and living authentically.

Reflecting on 40 years, and the rollercoaster twists and turns that have been a staple hallmark of our four-decade growth and international expansion across six countries, I feel that my naive and idealistic posture as a 21-year-old starting a transformative business in Melbourne, Australia, was, in hindsight, a silver bullet. In spite of the 54 sharps container competitors that commandeered the Australian market at the time, my focus was singularly set on resolving a hospital safety challenge, and confronting an unreasonably accepted norm that frontline healthcare workers and those supporting patient care should accept personal risk in their place of occupation.

The Conception of Vision

At age 21 studying science, I was shocked to learn that a 500-bed hospital could incur over 400 reported needlestick injuries a year. It was a revelation to me that the very people who commit their lives to serving others in their time of frailty and sickness – are themselves susceptible to contracting a bloodborne disease through exposure to a used needle or syringe.

I visited six hospitals, and from each hospital, I reviewed every single occupational health and safety report on each needlestick injury reported. I learned quickly that there are dozens of ways in which a hospital worker (clinician, facilities, housekeeping, surgeon) could sustain an injury – coming into contact with an overfilled container, transferring a sharp item from a tray to a sharps container, getting pricked unsuspectingly by a needle incorrectly disposed in a linen bin or plastic bag, or exposure to a sharp protruding out of a flimsy sharps container or left exposed on a benchtop.

Call it naivety, idealism, pragmatism or passion (or a combination of the four) I not only became absolutely committed to the vision of making healthcare safer for every hospital worker – that they could go home every day without being exposed to a needle-contracted bloodborne disease, but I quickly assumed that it would not be that difficult to engineer a clever disposal device that could combat all post-procedure needlestick injuries. From my research across Melbourne hospitals, such a device would need to be engineered with 13 independent safety features, many of which were oxymorons.

The Period of Testing and Trial

What I thought would be 3-5 years of R&D and a few million pound investment to design a revolutionary safe sharps container, evolved into almost a decade and a half of engineering development and refinement, and a budget overrun of more than 8x our initial predictions. Not only did our learnings reveal the functional contradictions that we had to solve in a container design, but they reinforced my green-bent imperative that the container must be reusable to legitimise the sophisticated engineering and material quality and lead in environmental efforts, and it must be supported by a purpose-designed robotic washing machine that could decant and wash the container to sterility.

Design Challenges

#1 : Designing a container opening a foot wide, large enough to empty a tray in… while ensuring a child’s hand could never get into the container.

#2 : Designing a flap with a precise centre of gravity, perfectly weighted to operate upon contact with a half a mil syringe or a tray (this one feature alone took 8 years to perfect).

#3 : Shifting our dedicated product-development focus and expertise to run a parallel mechanical engineering team designing a complicated robotic washer with over 14,000 parts to robotically decant, wash and sanitise containers to a superior level of decontamination.

Market Challenges

Several billion-pound competitors did everything in their power (legal and illegal) to stop us from gaining market share in local and international markets; these included anti-competitive market lock-ups and collusion, contract-interfering bribery and corruption, tampering and impairment of property to drive reputational damage. Across four decades, we battled over 40 territory-based court cases in England, Canada, the United States and Australia, fuelled by anti-competitive tactics. We won them all.

Financial Challenges

Since the day I founded Daniels Health, we have re-invested every dollar we made back into the business, and we borrowed a multiple of that to continue to amplify our effectiveness, recognising that the largeness of our vision could not afford to be restricted by quarterly or annual dividends. This meant putting everything on the line. There was a time when my house was mortgaged, my mum’s house was mortgaged, my sister’s house was mortgaged, and everything we owned belonged to the bank… my dad always said to me “when you burn your bridges, you will always find a way to get through every challenge because there is no going back.” I made this philosophy my mantra when I started the business, and consequently, there were many times where we found ourselves in a situation where every seeming escape route was blocked, putting our resolve and tenacity to the absolute test. In these seasons, not only did we grow on the other side of breakthrough, but we experienced generosity and partnership in ways that truly move me many years on.

Infrastructure Challenges

Entering a new market, with a failed attempt at a joint venture model, we had to quickly establish our own independent national service infrastructure. Leasing and permitting of factories, purchase and maintenance of truck fleet and the build-out of an entire transport and routing system, the hiring of drivers and operational staff to manage a direct-to-hospital waste service framework, and the deployment of multi-million dollar washline machines across the United Kingdom. Added to this, the localisation of support teams to not only deliver the best products in the market – but a unique customer experience through service, technology, education, segregation processes and innovation which holistically delivered an impact on needlestick injury and environmental footprint reduction.

People Challenges

Walt Disney was quoted saying “You can dream, create, design and build the most wonderful place in the world… but it requires people to make the dream a reality”. Success rises and falls on people, finding those who are more gifted craftsman and leaders than I am but who are equally dedicated to the vision. In the early days of international expansion, this also demanded being able to trust deeply and not be disillusioned when people didn’t live up to their promises. I cannot credit myself for the team that I have standing with me today, but there are multiple people – too many to name here – that stand shoulder to shoulder with me in the carriage of this business (and behind them, dedicated family members) – leading the organisation in times of famine and fortune alike.

The Period of Preparation

Within every challenge, there is always a silver lining… a lesson to be learned, a key that will unlock future capacity, growth and impact. Across four decades, we have experienced many seasons of preparation, some more prolonged than I would have liked:

In the seasons of preparation, we learned to be better stewards, wiser and more discerning leaders. We learned to have more grace, recognising the turbulence of life is no respecter of persons and the way we handle the small challenges will one day be a mirror reflection of the way we handle the big challenges. We learned to never give up, because to do so would have global implications on the safety of healthcare workers, whom we are here to serve.

The Time of New Beginnings

Newness of any construct ignites both anticipation and excitement, but also a strong and very real appreciation for the season that preceded it and the people who marked the journey. Across our four decades we have lost people that were so foundational to even celebrating this milestone today – among many, my Mum who started the business with me in 1986 and passed away in 2020, my Chief Operating Officer Chris Kath who moved his family from Australia to North America to build a future-state global operational service infrastructure who died in a light plane crash in 2022, family members across the business who have indirectly or directly played a significant role in seeing this business grow.

I am deeply thankful to the customers who caught the vision before we had a business plan, for Neil Robinson who has spearheaded our UK business as his own, for my family who have contributed above and beyond at the frontlines and the sidelines, for my board members who have wisely counselled and guided my steps in business, for the suppliers who collaborated with us in problem solving for maximum impact, for the people who serve with me today – some for more than three decades, and for those who partnered with us for a season shaping the culture, establishing foundational building blocks, and fortifying the clarity and strength of vision for those who would come after them. I am filled with gratitude.

I am so excited by the opportunities that await us as we step across the threshold into our fifth decade serving healthcare across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. I believe, without a doubt, that our best is yet to come.

Dan Daniels

CEO | Sharpsmart/Daniels Global Group of Companies