May 28 2014
The engineering and leadership teams behind TRU-D SmartUVC, a 5-foot-5 market-leading germ-killing ultraviolet robot, today announced additional enhancements to the device's innovative technology to bolster time-efficiency and analytical capabilities, developing the most advanced product in automated pathogen elimination for terminal disinfection of patient spaces.
From TRU-D's initial splash on the market in 2007, before UV disinfection was a large part of the conversation surrounding infection prevention in health care environments, the device's "smart" Sensor360 technology, which allows for instant room analysis and dose calculation and delivery, was considered a leading edge innovation. The technology allows for quick and easy set-up of TRU-D, requiring no input of room measurements, diagrams showing multiple positions of where to place a machine in a room or increased labor costs due to the need to cover windows and vents. TRU-D is able to disinfect an entire room – including shadowed spaces – from one location within the room, eliminating labor associated with continually moving it to multiple places in the room. Recent technological enhancements for TRU-D – including iTRU-D, the robot's cloud-based infection prevention data tracking technology – have ensured the same ease and instantaneous returns on investment from reporting the real-time infection prevention results, usage efficiency and risk aversion data produced by the robot. This allows for the majority of the infection prevention cycle to be used for generating the proper amount of UV light energy to completely rid the environment of the hardy pathogens that cause hospital-acquired infections.
Other disinfection methods have been proven to be more labor-intensive, with health care workers' time drastically increasing because of the amount of attention required for other methods. One of these methods, hydrogen peroxide vapor, has been cited to take up to two to four hours to disinfect patient rooms (William A. Rutala, PhD, MPH et al., 2011). Also, a recent study published in the American Journal of Infection Control (Janet P. Haas, Ph.D., MPH et al., 2014) cites xenon pulse technology requires 51 minutes to execute with only 30 percent of that usage time attributed to actual disinfection procedures. Marketers of xenon strobe light methods had previously touted claims of five-minute disinfection cycle times. Seventy percent of each execution involves necessary set-up of the device, installation of blackout curtains in areas that had open bays and glass windows or walls and continually repositioning the device for multiple cycles around the room. Additionally, neither of these technologies has the ability to provide real-time infection prevention data and labor cost efficiency metrics on a per-usage basis like TRU-D SmartUVC with iTRU-D.
"We work closely with our customers to provide a product that fits their infection prevention needs. Second to providing an evidence base for consistent disinfection outcomes to insure patient safety, labor cost is the major consideration in the selection of no-touch room disinfection technology," said Chuck Dunn, president of Lumalier. "TRU-D is validated by numerous third-party scientific studies proving that TRU-D's patented technology works to eradicate 99.9 percent of pathogens, which is what's most important to health care customers. Our upgrades related to time-efficiency optimization and analytical reporting make the overall user experience even better."
TRU-D SmartUVC is the device of choice for nearly all existing independent research on UV disinfection technology, including a $2 million infection reduction study funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Epicenter Program at Duke University and the University of North Carolina. TRU-D comes equipped with iTRU-D, a cloud-based, secure usage-tracking program that provides customized real-time infection prevention reports via an iPad Mini to hospital staff. More than 200 TRU-Ds have been deployed to disinfect hospital patient areas across the U.S., Canada, Europe and Middle Eastern regions, including the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland; the Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Center in Charleston, South Carolina; and Houston Methodist in Houston, Texas. For information and links to independent studies on TRU-D, visit www.TRU-D.com.