No-Touch Automated Disinfection System for Decontamination of Surfaces in Hospitals

Hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) remain a common problem, which suggests that standard decontamination procedures are insufficient. Thus, new methods of decontamination are needed in hospitals.

We assessed the effectiveness of a no-touch automated disinfection (NTD) system in the decontamination of 50 surfaces in 10 hospital rooms. Contamination of surfaces was assessed with a microbiological assay and an ATP bioluminescence assay. Unacceptable contamination was defined as > 100 colony forming units/100 cm² in the microbiological assay, and as ≥ 250 relative light units in the ATP assay.

When measured with the microbiological assay, 11 of 50 surfaces had unacceptable contamination before NTD, and none of the surfaces had unacceptable contamination after NTD (p < 0.001). On the ATP bioluminescence assay, NTD decreased the number of surfaces with unacceptable contamination from 28 to 13, but this effect was non-significant (p = 0.176). On the microbiological assay taken before NTD, the greatest contamination exceeded the acceptable level by more than 11-fold (lamp holder, 1150 CFU/100 cm²). On the ATP bioluminescence assay taken before NTD, the greatest contamination exceeded the acceptable level by more than 43-fold (Ambu bag, 10,874 RLU).

NTD effectively reduced microbiological contamination in all hospital rooms. However, when measured with the ATP bioluminescence assay, the reduction of contamination was not significant.