Healthcare facilities are havens for recovery and rehabilitation. But the healing process would be impossible without the stringent sanitization practices and procedures medical professionals use to prevent health care facilities from becoming reservoirs of unwanted, or potentially harmful bacteria and other microorganisms.
Maintaining a clean and safe healthcare environment is a top priority, and while significant progress has been made in sanitization methods, major improvements must still be made. According to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), even with modern sanitization protocols, on any given day, about one in 25 hospital patients will acquire at least one healthcare-associated infection.
Current manual cleaning methods are nearly helpless in combating against bacteria, but the battle is not lost. Infection prevention technologies are giving rise to a new era of ultra-clean hospital’s and emergency care facilities with the implementation of highly-efficient UV-disinfection robots.
But the technology is not limited strictly to hospitals and doctors' offices. The UV-Disinfectant robots can also be used to sanitize EMS vehicles and medicopters, as well as in assisted living and extended care facilities.
UV disinfection robots offer hospital grade full-room sterilization. Nursing homes, field hospitals, and biohazard zones could all be sanitized in a matter of minutes.
The World’s Most Powerful Germicidal Robots
The robots are fast and efficient, able to eliminate far more bacteria than humanly possible. Their ability to move around enables them to attack shadowed areas where many harmful organisms tend to manifest in places that are often missed by sanitization teams.
Infection Prevention Technologies (iPT), an industry leader in microbial desensitizing devices, claims to have built the most powerful UV light disinfection system in the world.
The iPT 3200 is the most powerful in the lineup, and it is already making an impact on many hospitals around the world.
UV Robots Already Making an Impact on Hospitals
UV-Disinfection robot technologies are well underway and are already helping to reduce healthcare-associated infections (HAI).
iPT has already field tested their lineup of UV robots and determined through independent studies and research of their own that the robots are significantly more efficient at sanitizing entire rooms, especially on door handles and shadow areas.
In action, the UV-Disinfection Robot IPT 3200 can significantly reduce populations of microbes in under five minutes. But boosting treatment times to 10 minutes yields virtual elimination of all organisms - an alleged claim no other UV robot on the market can assert.
“A 6-month, hospital-wide study showed a 34% drop in the incidence of healthcare associated infections with the use of the IPT 3200 UV robot and specially trained disinfection teams.” iPT claims.
The UV Bacteria-Killing Robot in Action
In practice, hospital staff reported minor improvements in hospital room turnover times, the time in which it takes a room to be prepared for the next patient. However, the robot could perform the task by itself with minimal staff intervention.
A single operator is required to guide and monitor the robot as it sterilizes a room. Despite the inability to reach behind areas, the UV light penetrates some distance around the robot, sterilizing everything in its proximity.
It can also clean entire rooms better than humans, helping to eradicate HAI instances.
Inside, the robot is guided around a room where it determines the level of UV rays to use in order to maximize sterilization. The robot can carefully navigate around the room while using germicidal UV-C rays to disinfect equipment.
Ultraviolet (UV) light does not kill microorganisms in the same way chemicals like chlorine does. The light damages DNA inside the cells of an organism, eventually deactivating the function of each cell. Evidently, genetic material readily absorbs UV rays at a specific wavelength of 254 nm.
UV light of this wavelength initiates a reaction which produces two molecules of thymine - one of the building blocks of DNA. The molecules bind the internal steps of DNA, preventing a base pair from forming (see picture below for reference).
In low amounts, DNA can repair itself. However, large exposure forces interrupt the formation of base pairs, causing mutations in the genes of DNA. For the intent of disinfection purposes, the mutations are typically fatal.
The rays are detrimental to microorganisms but are relatively harmless to humans in low exposures. Humans should certainly avoid entering the same room as the robot when it is activated, but the rays are not powerful enough to penetrate glass windows, so rooms only need to be temporarily evacuated. Moreover, the robots’ automated process monitors for motion and shuts down if activity is detected.
Sanitizing Hospital Rooms with Robots and Preventing HAI’s
UV light has long been used as an effective disinfectant, and with modern robotic advances, its benefits can be extended further to efficiently sterilize entire rooms.
Hospital rooms need to contain all levels of biohazards, and maintaining such a pristine level of cleanliness requires many hours of routine cleaning. But even with the utmost attention to detail, a human’s dedicated work cannot possibly defeat the constantly multiplying army of bacteria.
“One of the problems facing our healthcare system is hospital-associated infections,” says Nicholas Fitzkee, an independent scientist of the paper. Infections cost “thousands of lives and billions of dollars annually”, he adds.
It is clear, hospitals and other facilities are in need of more powerful and more efficient devices to help eliminate the risk of getting sick in a place that should be a sanctuary of nothing but recovery.
UV-disinfection germ-killing robots are the most powerful room-disinfectants on the planet. While not heavily used yet, bacteria-killing robots may be the future of sterilization technologies.
wereworfl on June 29th, 2018 at 13:33 UTC »
The kind our hospital uses is called Tru-D. Our hospital’s environmental services runs these for a few hours in rooms that held patients with c. diff (clostridium difficile) infections, which can cause life-threatening diarrhea if your natural gut flora have been a weakened by antibiotics or chemo. As a survival mechanism in hostile environments, this microbe produces endospores (think of them as little microbial bomb shelters) that cannot be killed with alcohol or chlorhexadine, our usual disinfectants. Strong UV will do the trick though — and bleach wipes can kill what’s left over. (Handwashing is also encouraged, as it will physically remove the endospores from your hands.) It’s important that we do everything we can to prevent these infections, as c. diff is becoming quite drug resistant, and the best non-antibiotic treatment is flora repopulation via fecal transplant (yes, you read correctly).
While the Tru-D is running, you’re not allowed to go into the room because of safety reasons, so the door is blocked off with a knee-high plastic barricade. Something about it makes the room and hall smell like ozone, the bitter smell of arcing electricity and smog. Always gives me a headache.
honorary_mexican on June 29th, 2018 at 12:55 UTC »
Except this device only works on a room that has already been cleaned by a human.
tomhastherage on June 29th, 2018 at 12:28 UTC »
Title/headline probably should say something like "santizes rooms far better" since that's the word they use in the text of the article.
UV light ain't gonna mop up grandpa's piss puddle no matter how many bacteria it kills.