MoonBeam™3 Disinfection Technology©: UVC technology adds assurance to patient outcomes.
Evidence indicates many frequently touched surfaces are not cleaned consistently in healthcare environments. Unfortunately, data has also shown that cleaning and disinfection of patient rooms, operating rooms and shared patient equipment in hospitals is suboptimal. Previous studies have demonstrated that less than 50% of patient room surfaces (Carling, 2008), and less than 25% of operating room surfaces (Jefferson, 2011) are properly cleaned and disinfected during terminal cleaning.
Why it matters
Studies have shown that the environment can act as a reservoir in healthcare settings: pathogens can live on surfaces for days, weeks and even months. Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) are a significant source of morbidity and mortality in Europe and around the world each year. Environmental contamination of pathogenic microorganisms in healthcare facilities has been found to be widespread; and has been shown to substantially impact patients’ risk of contracting HAIs (Cohen, 2018; Otter, 2013).
How can we solve it?
Diversey offers a comprehensive framework of cleaning and disinfecting solutions for healthcare facilities to help reduce HAIs, including a unique short-wavelength ultraviolet (UV-C) disinfection device. This portable UV-C device can be used to disinfect rooms, hard surfaces and shared equipment in clinical settings.
About Diversey
Diversey’s purpose is to protect and care for people every day. Diversey has been, and always will be, a pioneer and facilitator for life. We constantly deliver revolutionary cleaning and hygiene technologies that provide total confidence to our customers across all of our global sectors, including:
- Cleaning products
- Systems and services that efficiently integrate chemicals
- Machines
- Sustainability programmes
This makes us unique among leading global hygiene and cleaning companies. Everything we do has our customers’ needs at its heart and is based on the belief that cleaning and hygiene are life essentials. With over 95 years of expertise, we safeguard our customers’ businesses, contributing to productivity improvements, lower total operating costs and brand protection. The Internet of Clean™ is central to our business, connecting minds with machines to ensure we turn cleaning and hygiene data insights into effective operations and generate respect for human capital. Diversey contributes to significant productivity improvements, lower total operating costs and brand protection.
The importance of surface cleaning and disinfection for infection control
Commonly touched environmental surfaces and patient care equipment (collectively referred to as ‘surfaces’) in healthcare facilities are frequently not cleaned consistently, but often receive a significant amount of hand contact by patients and staff, creating an increased risk of cross-contamination for subsequent contact with the surface. Routine cleaning and disinfection of surfaces cannot be relied upon to mitigate this risk, as cleaning and disinfection practices are often performed inconsistently.
Carling (2008) found cleaning compliance for patient room discharge cleaning was 49% in a study across 23 acute care hospitals, with individual surfaces ranging from 20% to 82% compliance across the study.
To create a safe environment for patients, it is important to reduce the risk of environmental contamination during hospital stays and to ensure the environment is effectively cleaned and disinfected before the next patient enters the room.
Oxivir® and MoonBeam™3 Disinfection Technology©: the perfect solution for disinfection assurance
To offset these challenges, adjunct technologies such as UV-C disinfection have been introduced to enhance the effectiveness of manual disinfection processes, particularly in hospital settings where healthcare-associated infections are a source of major concern.
Oxivir is based on Accelerated Hydrogen Peroxide® (AHP®) technology, offering a powerful and fast disinfectant action effective against a wide range of pathogens including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE), hepatitis C, coronaviruses and norovirus. AHP provides an oxidising kill action; and the hydrogen peroxide subsequently degrades harmlessly into water and oxygen. Oxivir is available as a concentrate, a ready-to-use liquid, and pre-wetted wipes.
Diversey provides integrated solutions to help reduce HAIs in hospital facilities. It offers the combination of a cleaner disinfectant based on patented AHP technology with MoonBeam™3 Disinfection Technology© UV-C device, giving additional disinfection assurance in patient rooms, operating rooms, exam rooms, as well as other hard surfaces and non-critical shared patient equipment and devices.
UV-C technology reduces the risk of contamination and process variation on top of existing cleaning and disinfection practices.
Key characteristics of UV-C energy
Adjunct technologies, such as UV-C disinfection devices, have become an integral part of HAI control and prevention in healthcare settings. Augmenting terminal cleans in patient rooms and operating rooms has proven effective in reducing the risk of HAIs (Anderson, 2017).
UV-C has long been proven to be an effective technology to reduce contamination, killing or inactivating microorganisms by destroying nucleic acids and disrupting their DNA, leaving them unable to perform vital cellular functions. Weber and Rutala (2016) reviewed ‘no touch’ adjunct disinfection technologies, including UV-C systems, and concluded that these systems decreased the risk of certain infections. More than 50 studies in the literature have demonstrated a reduction in pathogens, a reduction in infection rates, or both, when UV-C systems are used as an adjunct disinfection technology. UV-C energy between 200-400 nm damages microorganisms by damaging the DNA in bacteria and fungi or nucleic acids in viruses, preventing the microorganism from replicating.
What are the important considerations when selecting a UV-C device?
There are many UV-C devices offered in the market with varying designs. It is important to ensure these devices are within a ‘line of sight’ of those surfaces most likely to be contaminated or frequently touched in a patient environment. As demonstrated in several studies, the power and speed of UV-C disinfection can be impacted by the distance and angle of the beam. The strength of the UV-C light decreases the further away it gets from the light source, following the inverse square law. Because of this, the design of the UV-C device can impact the strength of dose applied to surfaces, impacting the level and speed of disinfection.
MoonBeam3 Disinfection Technology: a new angle in hard surface disinfection
MoonBeam3 Disinfection Technology provides an additional reduction of contamination on pre-cleaned and disinfected medical devices and surfaces, to provide additional assurances for healthcare facilities. This portable, powerful system disinfects quickly, reliably and responsibly. MoonBeam3 Disinfection Technology is designed for fast, on-demand disinfection in patient rooms, operating rooms and bathrooms and can be used on patient care equipment, fixtures, keyboards, monitors and workstations on wheels (WOWs).
Why is the position of the arms so important?
The angle of application impacts the energy absorbed – surfaces perpendicular to bulbs absorb the greatest dose. Adjusting the angle can deliver greater energy in less time. Units delivering UV-C energy from vertically oriented sources deliver more energy to vertical surfaces than to horizontal surfaces. However, horizontal surfaces are arguably more important to infection prevention, as they are more likely to accumulate soil and pathogens that can lead to infection.
Three individually adjustable, articulated arms can be positioned at almost any angle to target the UV-C light, enabling improved UV-C dosing with reduced energy consumption. Users can position the heads to optimise UVC dosing of surfaces and equipment. This flexible device is easily positioned throughout a room or facility to enable fast and effective disinfection cycles. MoonBeam3 Disinfection Technology is a unique UV-C device, as its articulated arms ensure that adequate UV-C energy is delivered to horizontal surfaces, providing higher levels of efficacy compared to tower devices.
Cost effective disinfection assurance
MoonBeam3 Disinfection Technology is affordable to own and operate. It is quick and easy to use, with operation cycles as short as three minutes. Its unique design allows the device to be used in more places and its targeted, high efficiency dosing increases speed, allowing reduced labour and operation costs. MoonBeam3 Disinfection Technology offers assurance above that of any manual cleaning and disinfection process, reducing the risk for patients and staff. It is simple to use and periodic maintenance is limited to bulb replacement, with no tools required.
MoonBeam3 Disinfection Technology efficacy
Tests were run at third party labs using testing protocols developed by Diversey. Diversey Inc engaged two third party laboratories that specialise in microbiological testing; and provided the testing protocol and the Moonbeam3 device. To minimise the risk of bias, the labs ran all of the testing and analysis without involvement by Diversey.
The summary of the results are discussed below.
- Effective against key healthcare associated pathogens in three minutes at 1.3 metres (four feet)
- Greater than four-log reduction in bacteria and viruses, including harder to kill, non-enveloped viruses and tuberculosis (TB)
- Greater than three-log reduction in C. difficile spores
The testing results demonstrate broad bactericidal and virucidal efficacy of the MoonBeam3 Disinfection Technology UV-C unit against pathogens known to cause healthcare-associated infections and those which are otherwise important from a public health perspective. Use of the MoonBeam3 device on surfaces is capable of reducing surface pathogen counts by >three-log (99.9%+) for common HAI-causing pathogens, such as MRSA, VRE, Carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae (CRKP), and norovirus.
Easy operation
MoonBeam3 Disinfection Technology users only need to know ‘the Three Ps’: Plug in, Position heads and Press start. Simply place the remote and the disinfection process is automated.
Portable and versatile
MoonBeam3 Disinfection Technology is ultra portable and takes less than a minute to set up, making it ideal for inclusion with environmental services carts and as part of every cleaning and disinfection workflow.
How to use MoonBeam3 Disinfection Technology
The unit is placed with the centre of the closest articulating light head 1.3 metres from a table, approximating the distance from the unit to the centre of a patient bed as would be typical of normal Moonbeam3 operation when treating a patient room. For more information please see our video:
Diversey helps you improve turnover times, increase productivity and deliver improved outcomes
Incorporating any new technologies into a workflow can create new challenges. Diversey can help by providing a full implementation and training plan to help your team successfully operationalise the programme and optimise the return on investment, helping you realise the benefits of the UV-C technology as part of your arsenal to reduce HAIs.
Diversey can help you assess your risk and recommend best practices to keep patients safe during their stay, while helping you to improve turnover times, increase productivity and deliver improved outcomes.
Conclusion
In the battle to create a safer and more satisfying environment for patients, UV-C technology can provide an added layer of assurance to manual cleaning and disinfection programmes, lowering risk for staff and patients, and ultimately reducing the risk and financial burden of HAIs.
Our vision is a healthy and safe world where people are free to live their lives. Our mission is to protect and care for people every day by pioneering future-focused cleaning and hygiene technologies. We are facilitators of life.
Diversey is headquartered in Fort Mill, SC, USA. For more information, visit www.diversey.com or follow us on social media.
Oxivir: rewriting the rules for disinfectants
Oxivir disinfectant cleaners provide an alternative to traditional disinfectants by delivering fast-acting, broad spectrum disinfection with enhanced cleaning power that is staff- and patient-friendly while being gentle on most surfaces. The active ingredient, hydrogen peroxide, breaks down into environmentally friendly water and oxygen just minutes after use.
MoonBeam3 effective against SARS-CoV-2 in seconds
Diversey, Inc., a global leader in healthcare and infection prevention solutions, received confirmation through third party testing that MoonBeam3 UV-C Disinfection Technology is effective in just seconds against SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19.
Moonbeam3 Disinfection Technology has undergone third party testing against several microorganisms including enveloped viruses, small non-enveloped viruses, bacteria and bacterial spores. These tests have demonstrated a significant log reduction in these key pathogens.
Since studies have shown that contamination of environmental surfaces in healthcare facilities with SARS-CoV-2 viral RNA is widespread, Diversey commissioned third party testing of MoonBeam3 in the US; and has also partnered with the highly respected Fujita Health University in Japan, to test the effectiveness of MoonBeam3’s UVC radiation against SARS-CoV-2.
The completed test results from Japan proved that MoonBeam3 was effective against SARS-CoV-2 under a range of conditions with contact times as low as four seconds for a log six reduction. This study validates that MoonBeam3 provide an additional reduction of contamination on pre-cleaned and disinfected medical devices and surfaces of SARS-CoV-2, the pathogen that causes COVID-19.
References
1 Casini, B, Tuvo B, Cristina, ML, et al. (2019). Evaluation of an ultraviolet C (UVC) light-emitting device for disinfection of high touch surfaces in hospital critical areas. Int J Environ Res Pub Health, 16.
2 Heilingloh, CS, Aufderhorst, UW, Schipper, L, et al. (2020). Susceptibility of SARS-CoV-2 to UV irradiation, American Journal of Infection Control.
Margarita Llorente Delmas
Arnaud Hantisse
European Moonbeam Team
Diversey Europe Operations BV
margarita.llorente@diversey.com
arnaud.hantisse@diversey.com
www.diversey.com
This article is from issue 15 of Health Europa. Click here to get your free subscription today.
