In hospitals, cleanliness is a top priority. Not only is it important in maintaining a hospital’s reputation, the eradication of germs is crucial in maintaining patient safety. According to several media reports, more than 1 million infections are reported each year inside of hospitals. Also infections are the primary cause in nearly 100,000 deaths each year in U.S. hospitals.
Because of this, the health care industry incurs a great deal of liability from negligence and malpractice suits based on faulty cleaning of instruments and surfaces in patient’s rooms and surgical centers. Indeed, most venues clean with a sense of purpose and diligence, but sometimes that is just not enough. With that hospitals are beginning to rely more on technology to stop the spread of germs.
Enter sanitation robots. As the name suggests, these bots are supposed to clean where humans may not be able to. Essentially, the robots use UV lighting to fuse the DNA of viruses and bacteria so that they may not multiply. So while they may look like futuristic lamps on wheels, the light can reach surfaces that many cleaning products may not be able to.
The acquisition of sanitizing robots has rapidly grown into a must-have piece of technology for many hospitals. The safety benefits may speak for themselves, but they also signal a change in how robots may be used in the future to complete many basic tasks, including reading x-rays, making diagnostic checks, and transferring information.
In the meantime, hospitals still have a duty to use reasonable care in protecting patients from infections.