In the U.S., it’s estimated that 1.7 million health care-acquired infections (HAIs) are responsible for nearly 100,000 fatalities, with direct costs as high as $45 billion annually. In recent years there has been a strong push to address this problem from many angles.
Surgeons are developing better protocols for cleaning their instruments — as well as their hands, but what about the germs everywhere else in the OR? What about germs in other parts of the hospital?
Xenex, with their germ-zapping robot, may be ushering in a new era in hospital sanitation; one without mops and chemicals. By utilizing UV rays the company set out to make hospitals cleaner, and the results have been promising. DOTmed News caught up with the robot's inventor, Mark Stibich, to talk about the momentum building around their system, and the company's plans going forward.
DOTmed News: Dr. Stibich, you invented the Xenex germ-zapping robot. Can you tell us a little bit about that process?
Mark Stibich: My wife, Dr. Julie Stachowiak, and I were conducting public health interventions and research overseas when we learned about air disinfection technology being used to combat tuberculosis. Recognizing that the technology, with significant adaptations, had the potential to solve a major global health issue, Healthcare Associated Infections (HAIs), we began evaluating its potential for commercial applications.
First we tested the robot in the lab (to establish its efficacy against pathogens) and then in a real-world hospital setting. MD Anderson utilized the robots and published a study showing that our robots were much better at destroying pathogens than traditional chemical cleaning methods – and then they bought the robots, which was affirmation that they believed in the technology. We’ve made significant modifications to the robot since then based on feedback from our customers.
UV light has been used for disinfection for decades -- but not all UV light is the same. What sets Xenex apart is our robot's use of xenon (instead of toxic mercury) to create the UV light. Our patented pulsed xenon technology is hundreds of times more intense than mercury UV systems. This enables our germ-zapping robots to disinfect healthcare facilities in a fraction of the time it takes for mercury bulb devices to disinfect rooms. Room turnover time is a big deal for hospitals – and because our robots work so quickly, they can disinfect many rooms per day. The current record for a single robot in a 24-hour period is 62 rooms!
