Ultraviolet (UV) Sanitation in Hospitals

Business Problem

As a hospital administrator, I must clean shared equipment (e.g. gurneys, IV poles, wheelchairs) to mitigate the risk of bacterial infections spreading through my patient population.

I also must have a log of cleaning activities for compliance and quality control purposes.

The Proposed Solution

  • Install an ultraviolet enclosure
  • Embed a control panel for safe operations by staff
  • Install an RFID tag on all equipment
    • List the last sanitized date on the tag
    • Update the RFID display when the equipment is due for sanitation
  • Upon sanitizing:
    • Update a database
    • Update the RFID display with the new last sanitized date

A System Diagram

UV Sanitation System Diagram

My Key Contributions

Risk Analysis, from 30000 ft.

  • This project will be a complete failure if:
    • somebody gets hurt.
    • equipment is damaged.
    • equipment doesn’t actually get sanitized.
    • staff can’t easily determine what needs to be sanitized next.
    • the UV enclosure needs regular maintenance.
    • the UV enclosure becomes an on-prem entry point to the hospital networks for a malicious actor.
    • the administrative sponsor can’t easily access an audit log of the sanitation cycles.

Subsystem Analysis & Risk Mitigation

  1. Our control panel was a tablet computer that featured a homebrewed user interface with 10 views. Specific inputs on specific views controlled actuators in the UV enclosure. I designed experiments to ensure all risk of injury to staff or damage to equipment was mitigated.