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 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 [
Moreover, it would be important to evaluate the advantages of implemented cleaning and disinfection protocols with the use of UV-C devices in areas hosting fragile and vulnerable patients, e.g., in intensive care units. The principal limitation is the continuous presence of people in this type of setting. For this reason, it would be worth evaluating strategies aimed at protecting the patients safety using protective devices, which may be evaluated for human security during UV-C emission at specific dosages and times.
In the OT and ICU, where the limit for hygiene quality is defined by national guidelines, respectively, % (/) and % (/) of the surface samples resulted in being non-compliant after SOP. In the ward rooms, according to the standard reported in the literature, % (/) of the sampled sites resulted in being non-compliant. All of the samples were compliant after UV-C disinfection. In all of the settings, % (/) of the sampled points received a medium UV-C dose of mJ/cm