Germ-Zapping Robots Now Reporting for Duty

With hundreds of people entering the hospital on a daily basis, it’s important to continually advance and implement innovative technology. Lafayette General Medical Center (LGMC) is the first hospital in Acadiana to use Xenex LightStrike Germ-Zapping Robots™ to enhance environmental cleanliness by disinfecting and destroying hard-to-kill germs, bacteria and superbugs in hard-to-clean places.

LGMC joins innovative hospitals such as the Mayo Clinic, MD Anderson and Stanford, which were early adopters of the new technology. These Wi-Fi- and cellular-enabled machines are already killing bugs in more than 400 hospitals across North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. 

“As contaminants and germs gain strength and become antibiotic-resistant, it’s important for health systems to destroy them before they pose a threat to patients,” said Patrick Gandy, CEO of Lafayette General Medical Center. “The germ-zapping robots have been an invaluable supplement to our outstanding environmental services team. We understand that as superbugs evolve, it is necessary for our methods of disinfecting to evolve as well.”

The LightStrike Germ-Zapping Robot works by pulsing xenon, an inert gas, at high intensity in an ultraviolet flashlamp. This produces bursts of ultraviolet light, which penetrates the cell walls of microorganisms. Their DNA is instantly fused so that they are unable to reproduce or mutate – and no longer pose a risk to the next patient or employee in that room. These robots have been proven effective at killing complicated pathogens, like Anthrax and Ebola as well as the various strains of the flu virus.

The portable Xenex system can disinfect a typical patient room or operating room in 10-15 minutes without warm-up or cool-down times. At LGMC, when a patient is discharged or transferred from a room, an environmental services (EVS) employee will manually disinfect the room with mops, rags, disinfectant, etc. After the manual cleaning takes place an EVS manager will roll the robot into the patient room. The robot is then left alone in the room to perform three, 5-minute light cycles (one on each side of the bed and one additional cycle in the bathroom). They also perform two 10-minute cycles in each operating room every night.

In the month of June alone, 1233 rooms were cleaned by the EVS crew and Xenon robots. The five LGMC robots were named by employees: Walt, Daisy, Cindy, Randy and R2Clean2.

"We are excited to partner with Lafayette General Medical Center. Hospitals using our technology for room disinfection have reported lower infection rates, which enhances patient safety,” said Morris Miller, CEO of Xenex.

The Xenex robot can be used in any department and in any unit in a healthcare facility – isolation rooms, operating rooms, general patient care rooms, contact pre-caution areas, emergency rooms, bathrooms and public spaces.

“In infection prevention, our goal is to provide a clean, safe environment for our patients, their families and our employees,” said Gandy. "This is a revolutionary system that provides a second layer of protection after a room is cleaned and sanitized. We are excited to introduce this technology to Lafayette.”