South Florida Hospital Unveils Ebola-Zapping Robot
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CORAL GABLES (CBSMiami) -- A South Florida hospital unveiled its newest Ebola-zapping technology on Tuesday.
Medical staff gave a live demonstration of the latest weapon called "Magneto" and it's making the rounds through Doctor's Hospital in Coral Gables, helping to disinfect every patient room and surgical area in a way human's cannot.
"It's the future coming to the present," says Dr. Javier Perez-Fernandez. "In just five minutes, were able to clean a room for every possible and available virus known to mankind."
Click here to watch Brian Andrews' report.
Standing just 5 feet 2 inches tall, the robot can destroy the Ebola virus on surfaces in less than two minutes.
The disinfecting technology is also capable of also killing various multi-drug resistant organisms.
The robot, which is also used by the US Air Force, works by pulsing xenon, an inert gas, at high intensity in a xenon ultraviolet flash bulb. This produces Ultraviolet C which penetrates the cell walls of micro-organisms including bacteria, viruses, mold, fungus, and spores.
"We know there is human error when we clean a room," said scientist Sarrah Simmons, part of the team at Xenex Disinfection Services, that created the robot."This doesn't need a microscope to kill all the bacteria in the room because the light falls just about everywhere."
Xenex, which manufacturers the device for a little more than $100,000 per unit, said their robots kill 99.9 percent of the germs.
"Hospitals using our robots have been able to bring C .diff, MRSA, and other MDRO infection rates down in many cases by more than 60-percent," said Simmons.
Baptist Health Systems has six of the robots to service their facilities in Miami-Dade. Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale also uses the robots.
"Any time you come to a hospital, you want to know the facility you are going into is employing every possible patient safety measure to provide the best and safest environment for healing," said Dr. Perez-Fernandez. "That's what we're doing here with this robot."
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