I recently covered the Smart Field Hospital in Wuhan, China that is staffed entirely with autonomous robots, and the virus killing UVD Robots that were part of the “staff.”
Xenex Disinfection Services is a San Antonio-based company that makes the LightStrike Germ-Zapping Robot. Xenex pride themselves on being infection rate reduction specialists who provide advanced disinfection systems that guarantee less Healthcare-Associated Infections (HAIs).
It’s estimated that for each HAI the average cost is approximately $25,000 for hospitals, which includes fines, and re-treatments. This is where the LightStrike Germ-Zapping Robot steps in.
Xenex CEO Morris Miller recently spoke to Crunchbase News about the company and their response to this global pandemic:
The mission from the beginning was to reduce pain, suffering and needless deaths caused by hospital infections. Over the past month, our partners from all over the world, particularly in Asia, started ordering hundreds of robots. We’re working as hard as we can to fill all of those orders. We’ve been working seven days a week for the last three to four weeks. In addition, we’ve seen an increase in orders from existing hospitals for robots for their emergency rooms.
Xenex LightStrike Specs
- Deliver up to 4,300x more germicidal UV pathogen killing intensity than UV-C mercury vapor
- Able to disinfect an entire room in 20 minutes
- First of its kind disinfection system to deliver germicidal action from 200-315nm
- Pulsed Xenon Light delivers fast intense zaps that cover the full germicidal spectrum for fast disinfection
- Auto-updating software
- Cloud-based reporting
- Sensor Motion Detection
- Disinfection Pod
- Cost $125,000
Xenex Robots are currently in more than 500 hospitals around the globe including the Mayo Clinic, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, 10 Department of Defense health care facilities and 55 Veterans Affairs (VA) facilities. Other places include Asia, South America, the UK, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
Xenex robots have been in 21 peer-reviewed journals and have shown infection rate reductions of 50 to 100% complete elimination. The machine targets high touch objects and surfaces in the patient rooms that often contain many diseases even after cleaning.
The cloud-based reporting system on the 5th generation robots give hospital staff complete knowledge as Miller explains:
They [Xenex’s customers] know who ran the robot, what room they ran it in, how long they ran the robot, how many times they ran it,” he said. “We don’t just sell the robots to hospitals, we give them a complete picture and essentially hold their hands every step of the way.
LightStrike’s Disinfection Pod can disinfect equipment in 5 minutes, it’s portable on wheels and looks like an aluminum dressing room. Simply put a machine, wheelchairs, or even stethoscopes inside and LightStrike will fully disinfect it.
Miller has reported orders for LightStrike have increased 400% in the first quarter of 2020 compared to all of 2019, the company will be hiring more employees to try and meet demands. Miller made a comment relating to the coronavirus:
Hundreds of our customers are treating suspect (and now confirmed) coronavirus patients and using our robots to disinfect rooms where those patients are treated. What makes our robots different is the use of pulsed xenon to create intense flashes of germicidal UV light.
To read the peer reviews and watch more videos visit the company website: xenex.com
