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3 Ways Medical Computers Reduce the Spread of Germs in Hospitals

Nosocomial infections cost hospitals millions each year. Medical grade computers can prevent them.

Anyone who’s worked in a hospital or similar medical environment can tell you about HAIs, or Healthcare Acquired Illnesses. They’re infections picked up directly at the hospital: passed from one patient to another via staff members, improperly sanitized equipment, or simply being in close proximity to other patients. The CDC estimates that HAI creates 1.7 million infections in the U.S. each year… including almost 100,000 deaths.

Specific action can mitigate that, as can attention to hygiene from hospital staff. But the kind of computers you use can play a part too. Computer surfaces can carry germs and other contaminants, which can be passed on when staff members use the system or even move it from patient to patient via a medical cart. Thankfully, medical-grade computers offer a number of features that actively reduce the spread of germs and lower the frequency of HAIs in hospitals. We’ve presented three of the most important ones below.

Less Dust Means a Cleaner Environment

Dust is a huge concern in a medical setting: it often contains microbes that can make patients very sick. And when said patients have compromised immune systems or are being operated on, the chances of infection from a single particle in the air goes up considerably.

Commercial computers usually use fans to cool their internal processors and similar components. But those fans can circulate dust very easily, and dust tends to gather inside most out-of-the-box computer systems as a matter of course. Many medical-grade computers, however, offer fanless design: using heat sinks and other methods to cool their components.

That cuts down on intake openings and eliminates the need to blow dust around in order to keep the computer from overheating. It won’t completely eliminate the dust, but it does make containing the problem much easier, as well as making the medical computer much safer to use in close proximity to a vulnerable patient.

Antimicrobial Surfaces Prevent Germs from Spreading

Computers see a lot of activity, especially in a hospital environment. Staff members touch them, move them, adjust their position and even move them from place to place via workstations on wheels. Microbes will find easy purchase on the computer’s surface, and not even wearing gloves all the time can prevent them from spreading very quickly with just a few careless touches.

The solution lies less in the handling of the computer’s surface, but in the surface itself. By including an antimicrobial resin in the plastic of the computer’s frame, it cuts down on germs’ ability to spread and grow on the surface. As with the fanless design, it can’t stop the

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