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Robots used to kill germs in the University of Missouri Healthcare System

University of Missouri Health Care

  When cleaning your house do you ever wish a robot was there to do it for you? Well, the University of Missouri health care system has that luxury. 

In addition to traditional housekeeping, a UV robot is used to disinfect certain areas. This robot can kill 

  germs, including from the Ebola virus, if it had to. KBIA's Maureen Lewis-Stump spoke with the health care system Chief Quality officer Kristin Hahn-Cover about what this robot can do.

Maureen: Now, tell me about this robot that MU HealthCare is using. 

Hahn-Cover: This is something that we have been using for about three years now, it is a machine that shines UV light and the UV light provides disinfection to the areas that the light touches. And so we have been using that as one of the interventions in our hospital disinfection and cleaning program in patient care areas.

Maureen: Why was there a need for such an invention? 

Hahn-Cover: I will speak generally, rather than specific to University of Missouri health care, although I can get us to University of Missouri health care. There are many things that we do to remove potentially infectious agents in the environment, good cleaning practices, good cleaning products, vigilance, trying to reduce exposure as much as possible. All of those things are important and standard and getting better over time. we are very committed to, as an organization in health care in general, to preventing any health care associated infection that we can, and this is technology that is additive to the other things that we use to decrease potential environmental exposure to infection that carry a viruses, et cetera. One unique feature of, or one special feature of the UV disinfection, is that it does treat the spore form of bacteria called clostridium difficile which is one of the health care associated infections that we nationally and, we, of course, locally, because we are a hospital, worry about. We as a health care organization didn't specifically make this purchase three years ago because we thought we had some unmet problem, but as yet one more layer, one more intervention that would allow us to see further reductions, ongoing reductions in our healthcare associated infections, and in fact we have. 

Maureen: Where are the robots most used? 

Hahn-Cover: We decided that upfront, the specific rooms we would use on a routine basis. so we have rooms that are designated for isolation in the hospital for patients who have some sort of infectious disease, that could be spread to others through the hospital environment, also in our operating rooms and our kidney dialysis unit, cardiac catheterization labs, endoscopy labs for GI procedures, bronchoscopy suites which is where we do scope testing into patients airways, so those are all areas that we know generally there is more of a risk of surface contamination with bacteria or viruses and also our most vulnerable patients and so we began the routine treatment of those areas on a schedule basis with the UV disinfecting treatment, the robot treatment. 

Maureen: How long does a robot take to clean a room? 

Hahn-Cover: So, this is in addition to a usually cleaning, so the housekeeper will come in and clean with the appropriate cleaning products and then in the designated areas we will use the UV disinfecting robot. The one individual disinfecting treatment takes 5-6 minutes per cycle, however just because the way a room is laid out, one cycle may not be sufficient to catch all the surfaces or cover all the surfaces we are concerned about, so typically a room may take 2-3 cycles depending on the size and the configuration of the room so about 15 minutes in addition to the standard cleaning time. 

Maureen: What is the most difficult germ this robot kills? 

Hahn-Cover: Oh that's hard to answer, there are lots of germs that we worry about, that vary unlikelihood, all of the germs we do get periodic statements from the manufacturer of the particular machine that we have that tell us about their, when they study the UV light on particular germs, do they go away, do we kill them, and most of the time that's 100% or just a little bit under 100%, greater than 99% for sure on all of the data sheets that we have received from them. The one bacteria where this is probably has most of a role as a mentioned is the clostridium difficile just because some of our cleaning products, not all cleaning products treat the spore form and we want to make sure we get rid of that as well, that's a really durable form of that bacteria. 

Maureen: Are there many hospitals that use this technology? 

Hahn-Cover: I don't know the answer to that, I know that we certainly were not the first, we weren't stepping out on a limb to use it, we felt like when we made this purchase three years ago we were making it based on reasonable research and experience of use, it hasn't been these UV disinfecting robots haven't been around for decades but there was enough history at the time of our purchase that we thought the it was a sound decision. Does every hospital have one now? I certainly don't know that. 

Maureen: How many robots does the MU healthcare system have? 

Hahn-Cover: We have three. And we have them because of the fact that our facilities are spread out so they are not hard to move around, they are not hard to move around within a building. But to move it from building to building puts the robot at risk and also its just a little bit more cumbersome so we have on specifically for women's and children's hospital, one specifically for our Missouri Orthopedics' institute and one specifically for University Hospital. 

Maureen: Okay, and how much does one robot cost 

Hahn-cover: I don't know what our price tag was, but the general number that I have is that one robot is about 85,000 dollars 

A portion of this interview originally aired on Under the Microscope on October 23, 2014. 

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