Patent ID: 7984810

Claim:
A recovery device for recovering substantially intact medical devices that can be processed for reuse from a sharps container, which includes other medical devices and medical waste materials that should be destroyed, comprising: (a) mechanical manipulator means for engaging and manipulating sharps containers so as to enable safe access of unsterilized contents of the sharps containers by an operator of the manipulator means, even though the contents of the sharps container have not been sterilized when accessed by the operator; and (b) mechanical sorting means cooperating with the manipulator means for transferring the unsterilized contents of the sharps containers to the sorting means, and for enabling an operator to peruse and identify the unsterilized medical devices that can be processed substantially intact for reuse, for removal from the sorting means by the operator, to facilitate further processing of the substantially intact unsterilized medical devices selected from the sorting means by the operator, to enable their reuse.