STERIS Launches VaproQuip Decontamination Room

Biological contamination can be present almost anywhere in a hospital. Aggressive pathogens on environmental surfaces, such as high-touch, difficult-to-clean surfaces of mobile equipment and furniture, can remain viable for extended periods of time. Despite the best efforts of the environmental services department, cleaners and chemicals are limited in their effectiveness and difficult to apply to all environmental surfaces. The VaproQuip Decontamination Room (patent pending) is a landmark advance in environmental surface decontamination technology.

STERIS worked extensively with customers to develop a solution that addresses their key concerns related to cross-contamination on high-touch patient-care environmental surfaces, says Ted Mielnik, vice president of global VHP application development. These include patient and staff safety concerns such as assuring that items are safe to handle once the application is completed, and that using this decontamination process will help to minimize, and sometimes eliminate, the need to manually apply harsh disinfecting chemicals on environmental surfaces. The VaproQuip Room has been engineered to meet these requirements and more, and to provide many practical benefits.

The new VaproQuip Decontamination Room is for noncritical items such as equipment, furniture and other environmental surfaces. The room system is designed for the application of Vaprox® Hydrogen Peroxide Sterilant, which can be used as part of a cleaning and decontamination program to destroy pathogens on environmental surfaces. Application of Vaprox sterilant to exposed environmental surfaces achieves sporicidal, bactericidal, fungicidal, and virucidal activity. The process leaves no residue and no lingering odor. It has excellent compatibility with a wide variety of materials.

In addition, the VaproQuip Decontamination Room offers a validated decontamination process: its fully automated and monitored process is designed to provide a six-log microbial reduction on environmental surfaces. It is also designed for easy operation. Once the equipment and room are properly installed and qualified, a single button is pushed to initiate the application process.

The VaproQuip Room also offers increased efficiency: washed equipment and furniture surfaces need only be visibly clean and dry before the VHP decontamination process. Once the automated process is initiated, environmental services staff members are free to perform other duties. It also offers numerous safety features; it is completely self-contained and engineered for automated operation away from patient care areas.

In addition, because of the VaproQuip Rooms modular panel construction, it can be installed in existing room spaces. It can turn an equipment storage room area, for example, into a functional, high-turn processing center. This allows hospitals to make better use of their existing space.