It looks a little like R2D2. Then a technician pushes it down the hall, and it looks like a very fancy trash can.
But watch the technician push it into a room at Sonoma Valley Hospital, switch it on and shut the door, and it’s obvious the Xenex germ-zapping robot is no ordinary device.
The rounded top rises slowly, exposing long pulsing lights that click on and off, bathing the room in high-intensity ultraviolet radiation. After a few minutes of this, the machine’s work is done.
“The robot is a disinfection piece of equipment,” explained Kathy Mathews, Sonoma Valley Hospital’s clinical quality coordinator in charge of infection prevention and risk management. The UV light, she said, is powerful enough “to kill bacteria, viruses, mold,” resulting in a cleaner room.
By any standard, Sonoma Valley Hospital was already clean, with one of the best safety rates in the country. But the Xenex is a bonus, Mathews said, to be used “on top of the usual protocols that are used.”
“So when the next patient comes in they’re walking into an ultra-clean room.”
The device came as a gift from Sonoma Valley residents Bill and Gerry Brinton, who said they were motivated by a desire to make the local hospital the best it can be.
“We sure have a lot of good doctors here, and we have a great healthcare delivery system that we want to make better,” said Bill Brinton.
Brinton, who worked in the food industry, said he was first learned about the merits of ultraviolet radiation as a disinfectant during the late 1990s, when “I looked at different technologies that would make our juice products safer.”
At the time, he settled on a UV light device at his food processing plant “to sanitize the products rather than use pasteurization. ... So I knew UV light really worked.”
Fast forward to now, and Brinton heard about the Xenex device on a radio program. He approached Kelly Mather, the hospital’s CEO, and asked if she knew about it. She said she didn’t, but would look into it.
Soon afterward, the Brintons helped Sonoma Valley Hospital purchase the Xenex robot, making it the only hospital in the North Bay to have one.
An estimated 75,000 people die from hospital infections every year in the United States. “These are enemies that we have to defeat,” Brinton said.
The robot appears to help in this war. According to Mathews, the device has been shown to cut infection rates in half - a rate she calls “very, very significant.” And because it is a “green” technology that zaps germs on surfaces without the use of chemicals, it is equally effective on so-called “superbugs” that have built up a resistance to antibiotics.
“It’s just that extra step,” Mathews said.
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