How UV - UVC Is Used In Hospital Epidemiology And Infection Control
Safe and effective delivery systems of UV radiation, make it a very useful option for disinfection. Effective disinfection of environmental surfaces is a key step in the prevention of the spread of infectious agents. The last thing anyone wants to experience is getting some sort of infection in a healthcare environment, such as an operating room or hospital, while they’re already seeking medical care. This type of infection called a healthcare-associated infection (HAI), happens frequently. According to the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, around 1 in 25 inpatients has an infection that’s directly related to hospital care.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has said 10 million people a year will die from HAI’s by the year 2050. Certain factors can raise someone’s risk of developing an HAI; these include catheters, having surgery, getting a shot, and being in a healthcare setting that has not been properly disinfected. Also, there is a risk of catching an infection from a healthcare worker who is sick. Overuse of antibiotics can play a part, as well. UV-C light has been used for decades to disinfect industrial surfaces and sanitize drinking water. It is especially advantageous for use in hospitals because it kills the spore-forming bacterium Clostridium difficile, which is a major source of hospital-acquired infections. Whole-room UV disinfection systems were first introduced to US hospitals around 2007. Since then, popularity has surged because they sanitize practically all of the surfaces in a room at once, with minimal labor and without hazardous chemicals.
UVD Robots is a Danish company making robots that are able to disinfect patient rooms and operating theaters in hospitals. They’re able to disinfect pretty much anything you point them at—each robot is a mobile array of powerful short wavelength ultraviolet-C (UV-C) lights that emit enough energy to literally shred the DNA or RNA of any microorganisms that have the misfortune of being exposed to them. For large environments like a hospital with dozens of rooms, operating UV systems manually can be costly and have mixed results—humans can inadvertently miss certain areas, or not expose them long enough.
UVD Robots spent four years developing a robotic UV disinfection system, which it started selling in 2018. The robot consists of a mobile base equipped with multiple lidar sensors and an array of UV lamps mounted on top. To deploy a robot, you drive it around once using a computer. The robot scans the environment using its lidars and creates a digital map. You then annotate the map indicating all the rooms and points the robot should stop to perform disinfecting tasks. After that, the robot relies on simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) to navigate, and it operates completely on its own. It’ll travel from its charging station, through hallways, up and down elevators if necessary, and perform the disinfection without human intervention before returning to recharge. For safety, the robot operates when people are not around, using its sensors to detect motion and shutting the UV lights off if a person enters the area. It takes between 10 and 15 minutes to disinfect a typical room, with the robot spending 1 or 2 minutes in five or six different positions around the room to maximize the number of surfaces that it disinfects. The robot’s UV array emits 20 joules per square meter per second (at 1 meter distance) of 254-nanometer light, which will utterly wreck 99.999% of germs in just a few minutes without the robot having to do anything more complicated than just sit there. The process is more consistent than a human cleaning since the robot follows the same path each time providing certainty in disinfection. Autonomous operation means that human staff can be freed up to do more meaningful tasks such as working with patients. Originally, the robots were developed to address hospital acquired infections, which are a significant problem globally. According to Juul Nielsen, UVD Robots, between 5 and 10 percent of hospital patients worldwide will acquire a new infection while in the hospital, and tens of thousands of people die from these infections every year. The goal of the UVD robots was to help hospitals prevent these infections in the first place.