Top 10 Innovations: #5 | April 19th, 2009 | Author: admin

Note: This is the fifth post for my Top 10 List of the medical equipment innovations with the greatest impact on facility design. My criteria was simple: Did the innovation create a significant change in the cost (Increase or Decrease) to design and construct the facility? The greater the overall impact, the higher the item appears on the list . I’ve limited my review to the 20 year period from 1990 – 2009. Please let me know your thoughts. What equipment innovations would you have added to the list?

#5 Gas Plasma Sterilization

Plasma Sterilization sounds a bit like something out of the old Star Trek episodes. These units have been around for over a decade and were originally marketed as a replacement for eto gas sterilization. A bit of a history lesson is involved if you are not familiar with eto gas sterilization and the changes in regulations surrounding that process. I will leave that explanation for a later post.

What you should know is that every other high volume sterilization method, except gas plasma, requires plumbing. Some combination of water, steam, drain, or vent is required for large volume steam and eto sterilizers. The invention of gas plasma sterilizers created a very simple installation process: 1) Deliver 2) Plug-in to a 208V 15 amp outlet 3) Train your staff.

Compare that to the requirements of eto gas sterilizers in the 1990’s: A dedicated room for eto sterilization, a dedicated room for an eto abator, a roof top or exterior pad for a disposer unit. And on top of that, lots of venting and alarm monitoring with regulatory oversight.ﾠ

The gas plasma units require no water, no steam, no drain, create no humidity, generate nominal BTU’s and have a smaller footprint than their competitors. This combination of greatly reduced infrastructure requirements places the Gas Plasma Sterilizer at #5 on my Top 10 list of the most significant medical equipment innovations.

Tags: Eto, Gas Plasma, Hydrogen Peroxide, Sterilization

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