Mobile devices have changed pretty much every industry. However, healthcare was affected in some rather serious, yet unexpected ways. Mobile devices pose a huge risk for Infection Control. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that 1.7 million people a year are developing healthcare-acquired infections, leading to almost 100,000 annual deaths. Handwashing, or rather lack thereof, is considered to be a primary root, but it’s a tad more complicated than that. The (CDC) estimates that 80% of infections are transmitted by hands. But what if you touch your unsanitized phone immediately after washing your hands? Even worse, what if you had just been treating infectious patients?
The consequences of poor hand hygiene in the healthcare space are fatal. This has been clear for quite some time. New routines must now be developed in order to adapt to the threats that have come along with the innovations of mobile devices. But if only it were so simple. Many of the disinfection machines that were made to clean mobile devices also damage them over time. Hospitals can’t have their communication devices negating all the effort they put into maintaining good hand hygiene, but they also can’t afford to buy an already expensive machine that is going to cost them even more money in the long run when it damages everybody’s iPhones and iPads.
Enter the ElectroClave. It doesn’t use heat or degrade materials, but rather UV-C light disinfection technology. Seal Shield, their manufacturer, conducted 3rd party analysis with Vocera to show that after 1 year of continuous exposure under the LEDs, their Vocera Badges had no material degradation. Competitors with far less effective disinfection technology tend to also damage people’s mobile devices, on top of not disinfecting them properly.
The ElectroClave is capable of killing 99.9% of germs on your phone with only a sixty second cycle. If that’s not enough for you, with a six-minute cycle, the ElectroClave can actually eliminate 99.9999% of germs on your device. Perhaps these numbers don’t fully do justice how effective this product is.
Here’s another way to look at it. You are literally more likely to be struck and killed by lightning in your lifetime than a microorganism is to survive six minutes in this device. The 2-8 Miami Dolphins have better odds in Vegas to win the Super Bowl than a bacteria has to survive in this device. How likely do you think it is that P. Diddy will play the next James Bond? The Vegas odds on that happening are actually 2,000 times higher than the chances a potentially harmful bacteria will survive on your phone after going through this six-minute cycle. If you feel confident that Diddy won’t be playing James Bond anytime soon, you should feel 2,000 times more confident in this device’s efficacy.
This makes it all the more impressive that this device is able to accomplish such an extensive disinfection process, without damaging your devices one bit. Wondering how it’s done? It employs filtration media to avoid dust and particulates from entering the bays in order to boost efficacy by getting rid of shadowing. Additionally, its disinfection bays are built of quartz to guarantee the shelf the mobile device is placed on isn’t blocking any of the UV-C light. So if you insert your phone into the device for a disinfection cycle, there won’t be a spot that remains unaffected by the disinfection process, yet your phone will look exactly like it did when you put it in.