By Kyle LoJacono
University Community Hospital (UCH) now has the ability to make every patient room completely sterile with the help of a new device that vaguely resembles an oversized bug zapper.
The new piece of equipment, called the intelligent room sterilization system (IRS) 3200M, went into use at UCH, Pepin Heart Hospital and The Women’s Center Oct. 15.
“When we did testing on some of the more dirty areas of rooms, which are places like door handles, call buttons and toilet handles, before and after using the device, we found it killed almost everything in the room,” said Jacqueline Whitaker, UCH director of infection control. “We took samples from those areas and grew them in our lab and we found either zero or one organism lived.”
Whitaker said that falls within the definition of sterilized because no one can develop an infection from one microorganism.
One of IRS 3200M co-inventors Mark Statham said the technology has been in the development stage for about two years.
“It creates a powerful electromagnetic field that disrupts the DNA of anything,” Statham said. “That changes the DNA and makes it so the microorganism can’t reproduce if it does survive. The one or two that last die very quickly and the room is completely sterilized.”
Statham works for Infection Prevention Technologies, based in Michigan. He said only three hospitals in the country have the device and no others are in Florida.
“We wanted to go with this device because it truly kills anything left in the room from the last patient,” Whitaker said. “We’ve looked at some other similar machines and nothing came close to this.”
The mobile machine is taken into the patient rooms between occupants. It takes about 10 minutes to sterilize the room.
“We made it very user friendly,” Statham said. “It knows how big the room is and how much electricity to use to clean it. You just move it into the room and turn it on and let it go to work.”
Statham said people cannot be in the room while the device is on because it will cause temporary burning to the eyes and skin. To prevent an accident, a controller is placed on the door of the room being treated. The controller turns the IRS 3200M off instantly if someone opens the door while it is in use.
“We also designed this so the electromagnetic field can’t go through a window,” Statham said. “People can walk by or look in without fear of anything happening.”
The IRS 3200M is also being used in surgical rooms at the end of the day, but the larger rooms take more time to sterilize than hospital staff can give between patients. Statham said the company is working on a larger version of the device to mount in the ceilings of the surgery rooms that will take less time so they can be sterilized as well.
“This just fits in to everything UCH is trying to do to increase patient safety,” said UCH spokesman Will Darnall. “Hospitals sometimes get a bad reputation, but we’re doing everything we can to keep patients safe. This is just one way we are doing that and the best thing is it kills even drug-resistant pathogens too.”
All rooms will still be disinfected as before, then the device will do its job.
“We plan to use the same technology at UCH-Carrollwood, our long term center in Land O’ Lakes and the Helen Ellis Memorial Hospital in Tarpon Springs. It’s the best way to make sure patients are safe and we want to use it everywhere we can.”
