Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) are a significant risk. Every day more than 3% of patients in treatment at U.S. healthcare facilities contract an HAI, according to the CDC. As hard as hospitals and other healthcare facilities work to prevent HAIs, the infections have ruinous effects on patients’ physical, mental, and financial health. The annual cost in the U.S. is measured in billions. In 2017, we wrote about Surfaceskins, a self-disinfecting product applied to hospital doors to reduce bacteria spread. The highly contagious COVID-19 virus takes a toll on healthcare workers each day, which places extraordinary attention to new solutions to disinfect medical facilities.
The demand for LightStrike, Xenex Disinfection Services‘ “germ-zapping robot” is immense. Wheeled into a hospital room or operating room, LightStrike uses 360-degree Pulsed Xenon ultraviolet light that penetrates microorganism cell walls to irreparably damage the organism’s DNA to prevent replication. The Xenex germicidal UV light is called SureStrike 360. SureStrike 360 UV light covers the spectrum from 200 to 315 nm, using both UVB and UV-C light. LightStrike is currently deployed in more than 500 healthcare facilities around the world.
Xenex has extensive data from peer-reviewed published outcome studies showing that SureStrike 360 can kill C. diff, MRSA, VRE, and other multi-drug resistant organisms (MDROs) in just five minutes. The robot can disinfect a complete patient room in 20 minutes. Xenex recently announced that in testing at Texas Biomedical Research Institute, SureStrike 360 killed SARS-Cov-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, in two minutes. LightStrike won’t cure people with COVID-19, but keeping healthcare facilities healthier will help prevent the spread of the virus to healthcare workers and to patients who visit facilities for other reasons.
