We are more than just a water pump company. Through our solutions and services, we touch millions and millions of people every day, without most even noticing. And with that comes great responsibility. A responsibility to respect, protect and advance the flow of water for people, businesses and the planet. Because at Grundfos, we believe that every drop contains infinite possibilities, and that water has the power to change the world.
Among the appliable strategies for the improvement of cleaning and disinfection practices are the use of new materials and/or disinfectants, the training and audit of operators, and the use of new automated technologies, which are becoming increasingly important. In particular, no-touch disinfection technologies have the great advantage of not being dependent on the operator, ensuring process repeatability. Furthermore, their effectiveness has been demonstrated even on sites that are difficult to reach with manual intervention. Their use complements but does not replace ordinary cleaning and disinfection protocols. In the past few years, ultraviolet disinfection systems have been widely investigated and used as a way to improve standard cleaning protocols. Currently, ultraviolet devices are automated in order to guarantee process repeatability and reduce human errors. The application of UV devices as an addition to traditional environmental cleaning has become increasingly common due to their effectiveness in reducing the environmental microbial burden in a shorter time compared to other technologies using chemical products [
The role of the environment, particularly of high-touch surfaces in the patients room (e.g., bedrails, over-bed tables, and call-buttons) and reusable care equipment that is moved between rooms, has been demonstrated to be fundamental in the transmission of healthcare-related infections. Together with standard precautions and the application of good practices in invasive procedures, environmental cleaning and disinfection represents one of the three pillars of infection risk prevention in healthcare settings.
Each hospital should have an infection control team aiming to evaluate the risk factors involved in healthcare infection occurrences with a multidisciplinary and dynamic approach. Epidemiological infection control in hospital may detect all of the critical points of the healthcare procedures performed by nurses, healthcare workers, physicians, students, and external staff. This evaluation may also include the sanitization process and its management. An appropriate evaluation of the whole sanitization process, including the reprocessing of cleaning materials, would be the best practice.
The disinfection of the air with UV-C is performed by irradiating the upper-room air only, the whole room when unoccupied, or the air flowing inside the air-handling units. The study conducted by McGinn et al. demonstrated the feasibility of using a UV-C robotic system to disinfect both air and surfaces in a radiology environment, where it was two and four times faster than currently used chemical approaches [