St. Luke's, Lehigh University collaboration leads to intelligent, life-saving invention.            Among tales 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 quantities of life-saving provides and private protecting equipment (PPE), there has additionally been the need to establish faster, extra efficient methods to wash and sterilize those gadgets, particularly the coveted N95 masks.            St. Luke's University Health Network anesthesiologist, Christopher Roscher, MD, anticipated the need and an idea started to kind.            The St. Luke's Sterile Processing Department, or SPD, is the place the place all surgical and medical instruments are despatched to be meticulously cleaned, sanitized and packaged for reuse.

It is a behind-the-scenes perform that's a vital a part of the well being care system.            "On any given day, we're processing many, many gadgets right here at our hospital in Bethlehem," states Taylor Bennett, St. Luke's Network Director of Sterile Processing.            For Dr. Roscher, a light went on – actually and figuratively.            "I had been doing personal research about discovering methods to decontaminate masks for reuse, and peer-reviewed literature recommended that, in a pandemic, UV-C mild could possibly be an acceptable strategy to sterilize masks," he says. UV-C is a selected range of UV, or extremely-violet, gentle and has been shown to deactivate viruses and other pathogens by inflicting modifications in their DNA.            "What St. Luke's was searching for was a high-throughput sterilization system," stated Dr. Tansu.

           The two organizations joined forces via a series of Zoom meetings and tons of of emails, to design, fabricate, set up and Zap Zone Defender Device check the machine – all within a matter of two weeks – and all whereas maintaining social distancing protocols.            The top end result: a approach to successfully and effectively sterilize 200 masks each eight minutes.            "Our existing items weren't designed for large-scale use. They could solely sterilize about 30 masks at a time," acknowledged Eric Tesoriero, DO, anesthesiologist for St. Luke's and [Zap Zone Defender](https://mozillabd.science/wiki/Zap_Zone_Defender:_The_Ultimate_Bug_Zapper_For_2025?------WebKitFormBoundaryPfJZp57NUpWhQCTn%0D%0AContent-Disposition:%20form-data