St. Luke’s, Lehigh University collaboration leads to clever, Zap Zone Defender Experience life-saving invention. BETHLEHEM, PA. - Among stories of hope, generosity and togetherness, the COVID-19 pandemic has also given rise to an unimaginable feat of ingenuity - the invention of the "Bug Zapper" to sterilize masks. As hospitals and different front-line organizations jumped to safe massive portions of life-saving supplies and private protecting gear (PPE), there has additionally been the necessity to identify faster, extra environment friendly methods to clean and Zap Zone Defender sterilize these objects, particularly the coveted N95 masks. St. Luke’s University Health Network anesthesiologist, Christopher Roscher, Zap Zone Defender Experience MD, anticipated the necessity and an thought started to type. "It became clear that PPE supplies would turn out to be restricted because the virus progressed," he says. The St. Luke’s Sterile Processing Department, or SPD, is the place where all surgical and medical instruments are despatched to be meticulously cleaned, sanitized and packaged for reuse. It’s a behind-the-scenes perform that's an important part of the health care system. "On any given day, we are processing many, many items here at our hospital in Bethlehem," states Taylor Bennett, St. Luke’s Network Director of Sterile Processing.
"But with the present state of affairs, there is an overwhelming must course of our employees’ PPE each day. For Dr. Roscher, a mild went on - actually and figuratively. "I had been doing non-public research about discovering ways to decontaminate masks for reuse, and peer-reviewed literature instructed that, in a pandemic, UV-C mild might be a suitable strategy to sterilize masks," he says. UV-C is a selected range of UV, or extremely-violet, gentle and has been proven to deactivate viruses and different pathogens by causing changes of their DNA. Through a mutual contact, Dr. Roscher acquired in touch with Nelson Tansu, PhD, Lehigh University’s Director and Endowed Chair of its Center for Photonics and Nanoelectronics (CPN). "What St. Luke’s was looking for was a excessive-throughput sterilization system," said Dr. Tansu. The 2 organizations joined forces by way of a series of Zoom conferences and tons of of emails, to design, fabricate, set up and check the machine - all within a matter of two weeks - and all whereas maintaining social distancing protocols.
The end result: a method to successfully and effectively sterilize 200 masks each eight minutes! The "Bug Zapper" in motion. "Our current models weren't designed for large-scale use. They could only sterilize about 30 masks at a time," said Eric Tesoriero, DO, anesthesiologist for St. Luke’s and a collaborator on the challenge. The unit, engineered by Lehigh students and workers and assembled at St. Luke’s by biomedical engineer Jay Johnson, has been affectionally named the "Bug Zapper" not solely on account of its look, but due to its COVID-killing properties. "It is unbelievable that this mission moved at such a rapid velocity," remarks Dr. Tansu. The team ranged from PhDs to MDs and even included an unexpected contributor - Axel Tansu, Dr. Tansu’s adolescent son. In truth, it was Axel’s contribution that allowed the unit to have such a high-throughput charge. "Our original design was cylindrical in form, to make sure even publicity of the light on all surfaces," explains Dr. Tansu.
"Axel came to me and stated, ‘Dad, what about an octagon? ’ And certain enough, he was right. A patent to guard the team’s intellectual design has been filed. And a celebration for the collaborators to satisfy, in-person, will probably be deliberate once it is secure to take action. Until then, the Bug Zapper can be exhausting at work, serving to to guard the frontline workers at St. Luke’s and past. This, like so many different stories, affords a ray of hope throughout the pandemic - showcasing that the human mind and Zap Zone Defender spirit can overcome something - especially when working together for a terrific trigger. Afterall, as the well-known philosopher Plato understood thousands of years ago, necessity is the mother of invention. Founded in 1872, St. Luke's University Health Network (SLUHN) is a fully built-in, regional, non-profit network of more than 15,000 employees providing providers at 11 hospitals and 300 outpatient websites. With annual web revenue higher than $2 billion, the Network’s service area consists of eleven counties: Lehigh, Northampton, Berks, Bucks, Carbon, Zap Zone Defender USA Montgomery, Monroe, Schuylkill and Luzerne counties in Pennsylvania and Warren and Hunterdon counties in New Jersey.