When we designed the Portascanner COVID19 in June 2020, it was for the purpose of protecting our NHS, and ensuring Intensive Care Unit wards were fully airtight. Now, we have discovered applications far more wide reaching within the healthcare industry where our technology is needed.
Whilst it was designed in the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, this instrument will now provide a leak detecting solution for any infectious disease, for example Ebola, and will be instrumental in ensuring clean rooms and Isolator Units that hold very hazardous drugs are fully sealed, so that neither patient nor operator is ever harmed unnecessarily. Beyond hospitals, pharmaceutical companies harbouring these substances have a constant focus on ensuring sterility is never compromised and innovative solutions are needed to sustain these standards.
- Experts in the industry have pointed out to us the demand for our technology within the Isolator Unit and Isolator tent market. Isolator Units are used to achieve contamination control, and have their own built-in air filtration systems, which creates an almost complete separation between a product and its production equipment, technical personnel, and surrounding work environment. Isolator units can either be closed (completely sealed), or open (used to aseptic procedures where there is frequent entering/exiting). It is crucial that there are no seals, particularly in closed isolator units, so that the sterility is never compromised, for example for surgical instruments or hazardous drugs.
- Isolator Tents are used in High Level Isolation Units, for the treatment of contact with high consequence infectious diseases, for example Ebola. These have controlled ventilation and are set up around the patients bed and allows the staff to provide clinical care while containing the infection.
A 2018 Report on an International Review of High Level Isolation Units, showed that current levels of involvement of Infection Prevention Control (IPC) were ‘disappointing’, and only ‘44% of units involved IPC in training on a regular basis.’ The pandemic has shown the critical effects of not containing an infectious disease, and there is clearly a heavier emphasis needed to be placed on this. We are proud to be able to offer a solution to aid this development in knowledge and skills.Furthermore, our Head of Distribution, Chloe Kay, shares her discovery of a number of further applications for Portascanner® COVID19.
- isolation rooms,
- central sterile services department (CSSD) rooms
- operation theatres
- clean rooms
From the following OR article you can see that the following locations are pressurised as:
- operating rooms—positive pressure
- endoscopy decontamination rooms—negative pressure
- bronchoscopy rooms—negative pressure
- central sterile supply decontamination areas—negative pressure
- sterile processing instrument preparation and storage areas—positive pressure.
The CSSD and Sterile Processing Instrument Preparation areas were specifically discussed.
These are very needed tools for hospital Isolation Rooms, Operating Rooms, Central Sterilization Department (both positive and negative pressure), and fire compartments to name few.
The CSSD is where the medical instrument are cleaned.
This room contains sterile items in a hospital. Contaminated air from other areas should not enter this room. Hence, this room has a higher pressure than the outside. The air inside the CSSD room may go out of the room, but not vice versa. If the air pressure inside the CSSD room becomes equal to the outside air pressure, it is an alarm condition.
You can see in this diagram that a CSSD area has different zones for dirty, clean and sterile areas, and this is where different pressurisation is required: https://lifeplan.blog/2019/03/05/understanding-cssd-in-a-hospital-environment/
