Medizone International says it and a team of researchers may have come up with a cure for one of the most vexing issues affecting hospitals – hospital-acquired infections.
With a team of American and Canadian researchers, San Francisco-based Medizone announced “excellent” mid-point results for its AsepticSure product, which has shown a “100 percent ‘cure’ rate for disinfecting hospitals rooms of MERS,” or Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome, a deadly infection that has spread to other parts of the world.
AsepticSure has similarly been successful in eliminating other viruses – not just the bacteria – from hospital rooms, including MRSA and Adenovirus, while showing promise with Norovirus and others, according to Edwin Marshall, chairman of the board and CEO of Medizone.
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The mid-point results, he said, are equally surprising and promising, possibly on the scale of a medical breakthrough that can make hospitals dramatically cleaner and safer while saving untold billions in healthcare costs.
“The implications for healthcare as AsepticSure is adopted is enormous,” he said. “Almost not imaginable. It’s worked on every single bacteria we’ve tested, and we’ve tested anthrax.”
So how does it work?
Marshall said the AsepticSure device is placed into the room to be disinfected. Then, using UV generators, a charge cycle converts the oxygen (O2) in the room into ozone (03), which is then blown up to the ceiling. Then, misted into that is a spray of very low dose hydrogen peroxide. That combination makes trioxidane, or H2O3, which is potent enough to kill all bacteria, mold and the virus itself. Following the disinfection cycle, carbon filters then return the atmosphere in the room back to oxygen gas and the room is dehumidified. All medical and electronic devices can remain in the room and will be similarly disinfected.
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“And the room is cleaned,” Marshall said. “There’s no odor or hydro peroxide or ozone. And you move on.”
At Belleville General Hospital in Ontario, Canada, where officials were contending with a bout of MRSA, AsepticSure showed exceptional progress in eliminating the HAI, according to Marshall. The hospital reported it had historically experienced one to two new MRSA infections per month on the ward. After using AsepticSure once in each room, it virtually eliminated the pathogen from the ward. Just recently, the hospital’s chief of staff told Medizone officials that the previously quarantined ward has now gone a full year without a single new case of MRSA.
In 2007, the Centers for Disease Control dubbed hospital-acquired infections “the silent epidemic.” It also estimates that, on average, a hospital-acquired infection costs hospitals about $25,000 per infection.
An AsepticSure device retails for roughly $129,000, Marshall said, adding, “It more than pays for itself.”
The device is operated through a wireless, hand-held computer control. All performance parameters of the system are tracked and stored, so quality assurance can be verified on each disinfection run.
“Because we have this monitoring system, it tells the operator if the machine is working correctly and it allows for monitoring anywhere in the world,” Marshall said.
And if it can work for hospitals, there’s no reason to believe it wouldn’t work in other applications such as airplanes, food processing plants and so on, he added.
“We never, ever dreamed that we could get a 100 percent kill,” Marshall said. “This is the future of how hospitals are going to be cleaned and the science of it will also work in the food processing industry” and elsewhere, he said.
