About RTI
With a strong commitment to health, safety, and environmental stewardship, RTI continues to set industry standards, ensuring healthcare workers’ safety and contributing to sustainable workplace environment efforts.
With a strong commitment to health, safety, and environmental stewardship, RTI continues to set industry standards, ensuring healthcare workers’ safety and contributing to sustainable workplace environment efforts.
At RTI, we are driven by innovation and a commitment to health, safety, and environmental stewardship. Our mission is to reduce the worldwide spread of infectious diseases by providing safe, reliable medical devices. Over the years, we have expanded our product offerings to include a range of syringes, blood collection devices, and IV catheters, all designed with the same focus on safety and efficiency.
Through innovation, education, and the development of safe and reliable medical devices, Retractable Technologies, Inc. strives to be a catalyst in reducing the worldwide spread of infectious disease.
In the late 1980’s I was witnessing the deterioration and loss of two dear friends from AIDS. Around the same time, I saw a doctor give an interview regarding needlestick injuries claiming engineers do not care about the safety of healthcare workers. I was moved to action, I visited my local pharmacy to pick up traditional syringes, acquired a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and have been on a relentless fight to provide clinicians with the safe needle products they need to give them a safe work environment. Eighty percent of America’s leading hospitals now use automated retraction, which is the only safety-engineered technology that effectively reduces needlestick injuries. Unfortunately, in many facilities nurses still blame themselves for needlesticks that occur with poorly engineered devices. There is a simple explanation of why RTI out-designed and out performed the world’s largest and oldest syringe manufacturers. They were designing add-on safety attachments to protect their existing manufacturing equipment, while we, worked with clinicians across the nation to develop a safety product from scratch to truly protect America’s dedicated healthcare workers.
Thanks to the more than 30 years of dedication of some 150 employees in the small town of Little Elm, Texas, RTI is now the world leader in the design and manufacture of effective safety needle products. However, our job is not done until every clinician can go to the cabinet or drawer and grab any product confidently assured that it is designed with safety first and the goal that they will be able to work their entire career without experiencing a single needlestick.
On May 4, 1994, RTI was incorporated in Texas to design, develop, manufacture, and market medical safety devices for the healthcare industry.
The 3mL VanishPoint® syringe became commercially available in 1997 and the VanishPoint® blood collection tube holder was awarded “Top of the Line” by Risk & Insurance magazine.
RTI’s founder, Thomas Shaw was presented the Leo B. Hart Humanitarian Award from the University of Arizona Alumni Association for his work with RTI to protect medical workers from blood-borne-diseases.
When the federal Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act was signed into law in November 2000, RTI’s founder, Thomas Shaw was present at the signing in the Oval Office.
RTI won multiple awards from prestigious companies such as:
RTI won the following awards from prestigious companies such as:
In 2021, the EasyPoint® blood collection tube holder with needle was brought to market, this is RTI’s most recent invention, but not the last. RTI continues to search for new ways to ensure safety for healthcare workers.
Today RTI employs over 200 people, with twenty percent of those employees crossing the twenty-year threshold at RTI. Throughout its history, RTI continues to make the necessary inroads to establish itself as the market leader in safety syringe technology.
for COVID-19 Immunizations.
U.S. hospitals* use VanishPoint Technology
their nurses with our technology.
RTI has secured significant contracts with the U.S. government, particularly with the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). Notably, we provided VanishPoint syringes during the H1N1 influenza pandemic in 2009 and again during the COVID-19 pandemic. These contracts highlight our ability to meet the rigorous standards and large-scale demands required by federal agencies.
RTI is focused on reducing healthcare related exposure to bloodborne pathogens. Our solutions are based on engineering controls—devices that effectively reduce the risk of exposure associated with needlestick injury and device reuse. Unfortunately, healthcare worker access to innovative products is often limited by contracts and entrenched market interests. RTI has battled—and continues to battle—to provide safe, innovative products to healthcare workers.
From recycling the excess plastic our production makes, to beehives on our campus, to incorporating environmental efficiency, we make sustainability part of our daily lives.
To build a model corporation for employees, customers, community, and shareholders based on performance, pride, and profit; To set a standard for excellence, effectiveness, and integrity in selling and delivering our products; and to establish mutually beneficial relationships with other companies who share our overall vision.