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R2-D2 look-alike helps clean hospital rooms of superbugs
(Toronto Star, Joseph Hall, January 18, 2013)

The ominous list of acronyms and contractions can spell illness and death for tens of thousands of hospital patients in Canada each year.

Now, in the battle against such superbugs as C. difficile, MRSA and VRE, a robot that emits UV-3 light is entering the fray.

Bearing a passing resemblance to R2-D2 of Star Wars fame, this droid emits short blasts of high-powered ultraviolet light to rid hospital beds, bathrooms and ICUs of the potentially lethal pathogens.

“We’ve seen (in independent studies) reductions of 50 per cent or more in hospital-acquired infection rates,” says Mark Stibich, the inventor of the Xenex Robot System and chief scientific officer of the San Antonio company.

“And it can be used in every area of the hospital 24 hours a day.”

The system, which is being used in about 100 U.S. facilities, will soon begin a pilot run atHamilton Health Sciences hospitals, an HHS spokesperson says.

Wheeled between vacated rooms by cleaning staff, the robot lifts and dips its saucer-like head, pulsing millisecond blasts of UV-3 light, bathing surfaces and fixtures, and penetrating the crevices and dark places where the germs can lurk.

One of three types of ultraviolet radiation — UV-1, and UV-2 being the others — UV-3 has the power to drill into and “gunk up” the bacterial DNA that directs the superbugs to spread.

“At that point the organism can no longer replicate and at that point it’s no longer infectious,” Stibich says.

The light, produced by a xenon gas-fired lamp, can also obliterate the walls of the single-celled organisms for a faster kill, Stibich says.

The device is used in conjunction with traditional bleach cleaning. But with a welder’s arch brightness to its ultraviolet blasts, the robot must be left on its own when used in rooms and other hospital spaces.

At $95,000 plus a $1,500 monthly service charge, the robot isn’t cheap.

But the company argues it’s cost effective, given that superbugs can infect about 10 per cent of Canadian patients annually, adding billions of dollars to the country’s health care costs.